


Break the Glass

by whiplashcrash



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gerreras causing trouble wherever they go, Imperial! Zeb, Kallus gets a fic because happy birthday you big nerd, Kalluzeb Role Reversal Fic, M/M, Rebel! Kallus, Zeb just needs some love okay? He’s been through a lot, Zeb shows up in chapter three, be prepared for plot twists, not even the empire can keep these two clowns down, patience is a virtue, slowest of the slow burns mixed with angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplashcrash/pseuds/whiplashcrash
Summary: Years ago, Kallus escaped the Empire with little more than the clothes on his back. At the time, he hadn't thought much about what his past would mean. The past was in the past after all, and he'd had better things to set his sights on than Onderon, or worse still, Lasan. The Ghost and its crew had become family in more ways than one, as each of them had set out to prove.After all this time as a rebel, he should've seen it coming, should have realized something was off, that none of it had been right, but he'd gotten everything he ever wanted. How could he have already lost it all so quickly?
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus & Hera Syndulla, Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios/Original Character(s), Kanan Jarrus & Alexsandr Kallus
Comments: 40
Kudos: 73





	1. The Rebel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introduction to Rebel Kallus and the galaxy he finds himself in. Gerrera's are trouble, and green light haunts Alexsandr.

Misery. He was miserable.

It was to be expected, he knew, especially considering the situation. He frowned. Yes, it wasn’t unusual, but that didn’t make it any less horrible. Maybe miserable was the wrong word; with all the physical strength of melted stone but the anger of a war-hardened warrior, molten felt more accurate. Hot, furious, burning with a painful rage- yeah. Molten.

The anniversary was bad, he knew that for sure, but not nearly as bad as the very first day, the beginning of it all. An agonizing experience much like a vicious dog that would follow him around and bite his ankles every so often just to remind him it was still there, still hungry for his skin. The Empire itself was a lot like that, he’d learned. The ashes still haunted him.

_He couldn’t breathe. Everything was burning, his skin, the skin of those around him. The trees in the jungle. The air was gone from this place. Not even the trees seemed to return it to his lungs quickly enough. How were they still standing? Still fighting? He couldn’t bring himself to breathe._

Survivor’s guilt had its time and place. It would take that time and place, whether he liked it or not. Kallus struggled to put it in the least terrible of moments when he was alone and no one would see that weakness, knowing if he didn’t, it would sneak up on him at the worst moments. _Like one of these moments_. He tried to pay the hurt its due, but it wasn’t enough, he realized too late. If he wasn’t going to give, the guilt was going to take what it wanted. It just so happened to want that moment in the briefing. Crap.

He saw the hologram flicker, and he held his breath, ducking out of the doorway and hiding behind the ship’s bulkhead. 

_Blaster fire seared past his face. The Imperials were shooting, the rebels were shooting. Saw’s rebels, to be more specific, and Kallus stood among the soldiers, staring into the eyes of a blood-hungry monster, a Lasat. He pulled the trigger (why hadn’t he done that earlier?) but it was no use. The clawed hand moved swiftly to tear his weapon from him, and though he fought it, his hands were soon empty._

_His mind followed suit even before his body hit the ground._

His breathing slowed; it had to. He needed to stay calm, or risk Mon Mothma letting every member of the rebellion know exactly what was happening. Panic; he was panicking. It threatened to rear its ugly head, but he fought it back. _‘No_ ,’ he thought, _‘No I won’t let them do this-’_

“Captain Kallus,” the former senator’s voice rang. Crap times two. He stood straight up and fought the urge to jump out of his skin and flee that trembling mortal body. The whole gathering turned over their shoulders to look up the stairs leading down into the middle of that circular room. He resumed his position in front of the fixture he’d hidden behind. All the rebels gathered stared at him, neatly dressed (for a member of the rebellion) and hair slicked more or less back to give him that crisp professional feel of a military man. “Would you care to take over this part of the briefing?”

He started to nod, but a small voice reminded him to sound confident in the absence of the feeling. “Yes, Senator,” Kallus said, walking down the steps of the command center into the middle of the room. She gestured for him to take her place. He did.

Alexsander cleared his throat and pressed a button on the display module. “The Empire has a vast array of military strategists and warriors at its display. This is part of the reason worlds such as Mandalore-” he looked over to see Sabine flinch, as if she’d been struck. He might’ve joined her if he wasn’t trying so hard to not seem as nervous as he felt, “Who respect that kind of power, bow to Imperial will,”

“Not all worlds,” one rebel shouted, which was met with hushed words of agreement and a wave of nodding heads.

Kallus joined them and nodded. “Not all worlds, and hopefully, once we expose how vulnerable this beast truly is, fewer will see its power, and be more… _open_ to supporting our cause,”

“How are you planning on making the Empire look weak?” Ezra asked, as if unsure the question would be answered.

Alex nodded, and with a deep breath, he pressed the button on the display console again. Now, a hologram of a large, armor-clad group of droids was displayed. He felt the tension in the room as soon as it appeared. “The core of this Empire is rotting. Their capital is not always secure, even away from where most rebellion activity occurs. In addition to us, underworld crime chips away at the security they attempt to build. For this reason, there are Imperial security droids responsible for maintaining the peace. They come and go from the Guard’s central hub as they please,”

Hera gave him a smile, but it was wrinkled with her own quirk of an eyebrow and a cross of her arms. “They’re not exactly protocol droids,” she said whimsically, “How do you think we’re going to get past these?”

“We don’t,” Kallus said simply. “They’ll do all the getting past for us.” There wasn’t a glimmer of understanding in any of their eyes; even the Ghost crew had blank looks. He sighed, exasperated. “Droids are invisible, but more importantly, reprogrammable.”

“They’re not indestructible,” Kanan said solemnly, “I know what you’re talking about, but even if we get a whole squadron, we won’t get very far,” Kanan said. He looked intensely at Kallus in a way that made him feel bare, as if he’d been stripped to his soul, or turned inside out for everyone to see.

He shook off the feeling of being prey in a hunter’s sights, knowing the critical stare Jarrus was giving him didn’t mean much beyond concern for the rebellion. “We’re not getting a whole squad,” Alex said, hand fighting back tremors as he keyed in the next image in the cue. “We’re getting all of them,”

The whole room was filled with holograms of data, images of the security droids, maps of cities, diagrams of hardware, a flurry of code and programming whipping past their eyes; the gathering exploded. Shouts of disbelief and anger tore through groups and soldiers rose to their feet from their seats and began to swarm Kallus where he stood.

Ah. _‘And this is what Kanan was worried about,’_ Alex realized only a little too late. Still, to fight the chaos, he raised his hands to collect their attention. He failed. “Please!” Alex shouted, voice threatening to crack and give way to his sky-high anxiety. “Listen! Everyone, just listen!”

The rebellion didn’t care to listen.

“You’re talking about a suicide mission!” one rebel’s gruff and furious voice cried.

Another agreed. “You’re going to get us all killed!”

“Well, that wouldn’t be new, now would it, Kallus?”

Alex winced, looking at the owner of that voice, the shouter who had blindly wounded him. “I don’t presume to-”

“Oh, but you do! You do presume,” she countermanded, stepping out from behind some taller, towering rebels that were dressed in the same rough, guerrilla style as her. “My father believed you were a coward, but he was wrong. You’re a blind fool!”

“If you could just listen, I’m sure I could-”

“Let you persuade us to march with you to our deaths?” She spat. “No, thank you,”

He frowned and made the mistake of stepping towards her. “That is not what I’m trying to say,”

The group of rebels she was with snarled, some moving to separate them with sneers. “You didn’t think we’d know? You’ve got a reputation, Butcher,”

“That’s enough!” Kanan shouted, standing between the two arguing rebel leaders. “You need to calm down, Gerrera,” the jedi knight scowled.

“And you need to face the facts! Kallus ran away from my father’s side all those years ago, and he hasn’t changed. He ran from the Lasat. He’s a coward, and you’re a liar if you think you can tell us differently.”

_Onderon. Screaming, blaster fire… the fury in the narrowed rings of brown inches from his face. Gerrera was screaming so close he was spitting. But what was he saying? There was noise, but no words, no reason to the sounds splitting his head apart._

_“Do you understand!?”_

Through clenched teeth and curling fists, he bit back every scathing remark on the tip of his tongue and scowled. Alex forced his reply to be as curt and contained as possible. Control was essential; he couldn’t afford to stoop to her level, and he mustered a forced neutral expression, although it carried anger Alex couldn’t force himself to care about. “I didn’t run. I fought. I fought and watched everyone around me get blown to pieces.” Anger continued to work its way out, but the intelligence agent couldn’t bring himself to care; he was furious. “Your father made his own assumptions about me and about what happened, but that doesn’t mean that you should, too!”

“Enough!” A worn, irritated voice shouted. It silenced the room immediately, and its owner stood, arms raised in front of Kallus as if to shield him. “I am ashamed of the behavior seen here today! Leigh Gerrera, your personal vendettas have no place here. Check either your attitude or yourself at the door. I’ll allow you to decide as to which one you choose,” Leigh made a sour face and opened her mouth to protest, but Mon Mothma kept her quiet with a wave of her hand. “Captain Kallus’ strategy is sound. I would never have approved a briefing on his plan otherwise. If you would care to listen to one of our most respected and, in my opinion, most capable soldiers, you would realize as much,”

He winced. “Senator, if I might be allowed to explain-” Kallus whispered at which she silenced him once more, this time using a cool stare. Only those closest to him noticed how he barely shrunk down into himself.

“Leigh Gerrera’s bold accusation is based on a second-hand account of an ambush and slaughter of her father and an entire squadron of our allies many years ago, on Onderon,” Senator Mothma said. “I understand that Captain Kallus fought until he could not. Not one of the descriptors she has employed are in accordance with the alliance’s beliefs, or even true.” Kallus would have blushed then and there if not so genuinely warmed by her consideration. “Now, if you would allow our respected intelligence officer to explain to you his plan, I would be most grateful,”

Alex nodded, clearing his throat when he felt the sudden eager attention of several hundred pairs of eyes on him and the briefing. He keyed in the return to the simpler breakdown of the plan and enhanced an image of a large round building. “Now, as I was saying, the droids are reprogrammable. Thanks to two of our very own bright minds, Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger-” the new fledgling jedi laughed and rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed, “We have weaponized a potent bypass virus to accomplish our goal. We need only infect one droid per control region to have complete control over their entire network,”

Even Gerrera looked intrigued, if not appeased, he noted. “How?” she asked, sitting up from the slouch she’d clung to the moment Mon Mothma had put her in her place.

“The droids all connect to a central terminal in every region of security across the capital. Some are larger than others, but as soon as the droids are discretely compromised, they will spread the reprogramming initiative throughout the terminal and to each of the droids over a three-day period,” he said, and before confusion turned into anger, he explained quickly. “The maximum power life of each droid, to ensure all have been accounted for and liberated from the Empire’s grasp.

From the easier atmosphere and quiet hubbub of his fellow comrades, he could tell he’d at least wrangled their interest, if not their confidence, in his plan. Mon Mothma nodded in approval, and Hera smiled as if to say: ‘See, I told you so,” which he would have been happy to hear regardless.

“That’s actually not a bad plan,” Leigh said.

He couldn’t help it, Kallus smiled.

“So, what else do you have for us, Captain Kallus?” Kanan asked. The jedi knight caught his friend’s eye and with that telltale silent pride on his features. It was something he’d often caught on the jedi’s face when Ezra wasn’t looking, and it was directed at him. The giddiness wouldn’t be contained, and he smiled through the end of the briefing.

* * *

Once the collection of rebels had dispersed itself from the command center, each returned to their respective ships while long range transmissions ended, blue figures dissolving before his eyes. The command center was emptying itself, some of the rebels were staying on the ship for a little while longer. The crew of the Ghost were some such rebels.

Hera was waiting in the hallway. Chopper by her side. Alex smiled at the droid, and two mechanical arms waved back. She stood tall in that orange suit, lekku swishing in the air when she moved from against the wall to wrap her arms around him in a tight hug. He didn’t tense, but only years of familiarity with her kindness and those same embraces permitted it. If it had been anyone else, he’d have stood stiffly in that awkward, unwanted touch. But this was Hera.

“I am so proud of you, Alex,” she said. And it was true. She’d been furious at Saw’s old goons for stirring up trouble for Kallus, and only Kanan had stopped her from beating them until her knuckles bled.

He returned the hug and breathed out the rush of air he’d unknowingly taken in, grateful for the easy comradery between them. “Thank you, Hera,” the intelligence division agent said, “It means a lot,”

She held on for a little longer than was necessary, a bystander would have noticed, but not long enough for him to be uncomfortable. In another life, he might have relished in the love language of touch, but as it were, there was too much going on there for him to enjoy it as freely as others might have. It was something she’d learned over the years. Even when she stepped back, nimble oil-stained fingers squeezed his arms reassuringly. “I was going to knock their teeth out; just so you know. They had no right,” the Twi’lek said.

Blond hair slipped from behind his ears as he shrugged. “It’s okay. I- just, Gerrera and Lasats.” He met her eyes with his own, knowing that pain was something he could not hide. “You know how it is.” He tried to sound dismissive, but the only thing that came out was that same pain, and a touch of embarrassment at not being able to get control over his emotions. But Hera didn’t care, he knew, and she was hardly the kind of woman to judge him for it. “Sorry, it’s stupid,”

“No, you’re right, I do know, but that doesn’t make it anymore okay, Alex.” She looked at him sadly. “You shouldn’t dismiss yourself like that. It’s not okay, and it’s not stupid to be upset about what she said. No matter what that bantha poo-headed idiot Gerrera says, you matter. Not just to me, but to all of us.”

Chopper warbled and wheeled over to his side, tapping his leg a little harsher than necessary, but enough to get the point across.

Sheepish, Alex nodded. “Alright.” he caved, letting her steer him towards a hallway junction where the rest of their family stood waiting.

Sabine waved cheerily, and Ezra perked up to see him from behind the colorful head of his Mandalorian friend. Hera must’ve done some sort of movement behind his back, because Kanan came forward abruptly and placed his hand on the intelligence officer’s shoulder. It was warm, just like Kanan somehow always was. _Must’ve been a jedi thing_ , Alex mused.

“You know we’ve got your back, buddy. We’re not going anywhere,” he reminded Alex. “I think your plan will work. We’ll need to be prepared for when it does. You up for the challenge?”

The rebel paused. He was tempted to say no, if only because it was honest; he didn’t feel ready. The more he thought about it though, the more he wasn’t sure about the concrete nature of his answer. “No,” he admitted, smiling weakly at the Ghost crew. “But I will be,”

Sabine quirked an eyebrow. “You will be?” she repeated.

Alex nodded. Sabine might’ve said more if not for Ezra bouncing on his heels. “Yeah, he will be, right?”

He smiled down at his shorter companion. “Right,”

“You promise?”

Alex sighed. “Yes, I promise, Ezra.” He slung an arm over the shoulders of the jedi-to-be and pulled their newest family member into his side, and ruffled the Bridger boy’s hair affectionately. He barely left a dent in the messy blue locks. Ezra laughed and half heartedly pushed him away, but was unsuccessful. The two of them continued like this for some time down the corridor with the rest of the Ghost crew in tail. The gaggle of rebels laughed and spoke loudly amongst themselves pushing and teasing in only that way family could.

Together.

* * *

Green meant many things. Life, rebirth; sometimes moldy rations. A few times, even interesting shades of bruised bodies after more rambunctious sparring sessions and some of Sabine’s more exciting handiwork. For Kallus, it also meant nightmares. The wrong shade of the color or flash of light were sometimes all it took, but other times it took nothing to remind him of that terrible color.

That nothing tore his rest to shreds. When his eyes snapped open, though all he could see was darkness, it still danced in his mind’s eye. Years of experience let him know if he’d screamed. Ezra was still sound asleep, so it seemed no matter how horrid, these nightmares had been suffered in near silence.

Still, that didn’t stop Kanan from showing up without fail, every time. He slipped out without so much as a sound and sank into the seats around the dejarik table next to the mentally battered Alex. The jedi placed one hand on his shoulder. This time, Alex did flinch, but he couldn’t help it, and they both knew that. Kanan’s grasp stayed firm, but not too suffocating. Even the calming aura of the jedi did little to settle his unease, but it was more than anyone else could do. For that, he was grateful, even if he buried his head in his hands and an unwilled half-strangled whimper came out.

“Sometimes I’m so sure that I’m over it. It’s in the past and that’s that, but-” he trailed off and heaved a miserable sigh, “Kanan, I don’t think I’m ever going to get over this. Onderon and Lasan- I just don’t know who I’m trying to convince that I’m alright, but the more I try, the less alright I feel,”

“Loss is never easy,” the brunet said, taking a seat besides his companion. “Guilt is worse,”

Alex nodded; Kanan knew what he was talking about, he’d learned since the first few sleepless nights on the Ghost. As much as it felt like it sometimes, he wasn’t the only one with scars. Kanan’s story had proved that. They stayed as they were for some time, Alex hunched over the table with his own arms folded over his head. Kanan waited patiently. Close, but not touching, only waiting for when he could at least breathe without that burden.

Alexsandr breathed deeply through his mouth and let the slow rush of air slip past his nose to try and calm himself. “Kanan?”

“I’m here,” Kanan said. “Not going anywhere, buddy,”

He nodded again, his mind slowly reeling itself back in. It took some time, a number of minutes, perhaps longer, but Kanan waited without complaint, yawning or making him feel like a burden. It was a rare gift, Alex had learned, and one he immensely appreciated.

After so many years of agony and well-meaning but ill-equipped and inexperienced companions, he’d been so relieved by Kanan’s simple understanding. He was brought to tears aboard the Ghost his first night on board, simply realizing he was not doomed to be trapped in that downward spiral he’d surrendered to once he’d tired of fighting it off.

After nothing more than silence and one or two silent tears, Alex sniffled, wiping his sleeve over his cheeks to erase streaks of sorrow. They’d never been there as far as anyone else would know. His fast was dusted pink when he looked up at Kanan, though it was not unusual for someone of his complexion.

“Sorry,” he apologized out of habit.

Kanan shook his head. “You don’t need to be. It’s not something you should be sorry for. I almost let Hera show Gerrera what’s what, but we would have all been thrown out with her. I might just talk to her myself now,” his longtime friend admitted.

He shook his head, a familiar kind of exhaustion gesturing eagerly at him. He waved it off. “Don’t. She just wants to fight everyone, and that includes all of us,” Alex said. “You’ll just be giving her exactly what she wants.”

He gave Alex a look and sighed. “That kid is a pain in everyone’s side,” he finally managed, at which Kallus agreed. “Saw was just as bad?

Alex nodded. “If not worse. It’s genetic apparently. His sister was the same way during the Clone Wars,” he told Kanan. “It’s also got a nasty habit of getting them and the people around them killed,”

“Great.” Kanan rolled his eyes, but at the torn expression Alex wore, he didn’t need to sense the conflict within him to know it was there, and in full force, too. “What’s the matter?” He asked. “Is it Gerrera? We’d never just let her get you killed, you know,”

“No, it’s not that,” Alexsandr said, tucking away the face he’d made into some deep dark locked box in his mind too late. “Saw, despite his feelings about me, wasn’t a terrible person. Definitely not a good one, and a little paranoid, but he did care. He cared too much,”

“What’s your point? That Leigh attacks you from a place of concern for you?” Kanan asked, disbelief and maybe a hint of sarcasm rippling through.

He shook his head firmly. “No, she has made her true feelings quite clear about me, but I can’t bring myself to believe she deserves whatever consequences come in response to her actions, no matter my issues with her.”

Kanan laughed. It was a short and hollow sound. He almost couldn’t believe it. Out of all the things Kallus could have chosen, it was— “Empathy?”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Oh, I knew it. I never should have told you—”

“No, it’s not weird. It’s just so you, I’m surprised I didn’t see it coming, Alex,” the jedi admitted. “You just love to keep surprising us, though.”

“Really?” Alex couldn’t believe it; it was his turn now, he thought playfully, but Kanan had always stuck by his side since they’d become such good friends.

Kanan’s blue eyes spoke for him, but to be sure, he responded anyways. “Yes, really. You’re not Gerrera; not either of them.” One gloved hand rested on Alex’s shoulder. “Your compassion just never stops surprising me. After everything you’ve been through, it’s still kicking. Some jedi struggled with that, so it’s not an easy thing, but it’s a powerful ability to have in your arsenal,”

“I sometimes wish it wasn’t so potent,” Alex confessed.

At that, Kanan actually laughed. “It’s who you are. You can’t help it, and I don’t know of anyone who’d ask you to change for it.” The jedi stood, hand squeezing Alex’s shoulder. His joy buzzed through the touch, something else he’d never understand how the jedi did.

“So, if I can’t change it, there would be no hope for anyone else on that front, then?”

“Nope, so get used to it, already,”

Alex smiled, embarrassed. “Thanks, Kanan,”

“Anytime, buddy,” came the genuine reply of his friend, who he could see returning to his quarters out of the corner of his eye. “Sleep if you can. We’re going to need you at the top of your game tomorrow,”

Alexsandr smiled wryly. “Don’t you always?”

“If you know—” Kanan asked teasingly, “—Why do you have to ask?”

He nodded, exhaustion now fervently dragging him towards that formerly elusive slumber. “Good night, Kanan,” he said, a glance over his shoulder letting him see an easy wave and Kanan disappearing down the hallway behind those doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday to our beloved big nerd Alexsandr Kallus! It's a Kallus-centric, fic, you'll see why eventually. Should be updating regularly, I have had a lot of this planned out way in advance, and I started writing this in January, about two months ago, so here goes nothing.
> 
> Zeb isn't here yet! I know, I know, you can throw fruit, but he's on his way, I promise, he's just taking his sweet time making his way into the story, and with good reason, too. 
> 
> Just trust me. Actually, maybe don't. Bad idea... writers can be evil o. o


	2. The Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost departs for the Imperial Capital, and all is well besides an already worried Alexsandr not dealing with his stress very well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s part two! Enjoy some bonding and conversation while our crew gets where they need to be going. 
> 
> I am open to a beta, knowing that not everything is caught when you revise your own work, but that can be worked out more or less later.

Alex did sleep. Not much, but it was so deep he didn’t remember his dreams when he woke again, one hour before the others aboard the _Ghost_. He could have sought out that bitter caf, fumbling with the machine in his exhaustion and swearing lividly when he spilled it on himself. He didn’t.

In fact, he couldn’t bring himself to get up, much less do anything else. Ezra’s quiet breathing in the bunk above him reminded him he wasn’t alone, but it felt so nice to just lay there and let his mind wander. Every so often he had to beat stray thoughts inching towards dark corners with sticks into their worn cages, but he laid in a strange sort of limbo for so long he nearly jumped out of his skin when Ezra flew off his bunk above to the floor below.

When the ball of orange and blue whipped past him into the floor, Alexsandr shouted, scrambling back out of years of reflex. “By the love of- Ezra!” he exclaimed, sitting up and pulling off the many blankets he’d been burrowed under. His bare feet brushed the freezing floor and he shuddered as he pulled them back up to escape the cold. Now, out from underneath the safety of those covers, the blushed feet started to lose their pink.

Ezra flinched. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were still here. You’re always up really early, and gone before I wake up,”

“Yes, well,” he braced himself for the cold floor and stood by his bunkmate with a kind nearly sheepish smile. “For once I decided to relax, instead, I suppose,” Alex offered a shrug, and he walked over to pull a t-shirt over the undershirt he was wearing. “I can’t blame you for assuming I’d follow my routine. It’s what you’re used to.”

Ezra might have said something else; he was giving Alex a perplexed look. The boy was far more analytical than he realized, and the jedi training only sharpened the blade of his undiscovered instrument, but he didn’t get the chance, and Kallus was mildly relieved.

“Alex!” came Hera’s frustrated shout from just outside their room. “How could you have done this?” She demanded. “And to me, out of everyone on this ship!”

Both bunkmates gave one another a confused look, and Alexsandr Kallus had exactly 2.43 seconds to try and remember what it was he’d done before the doors flew open to make way for their ship’s captain. In shuffled a tired-looking Hera, holding a mug in front of her with two hands. She looked every bit the morning person she was, which was to say, not at all.

Hera offered out the cup to him, half caught between exhaustion and desperation. “What did I do, now?” he asked, taking it in one hand to examine the thing she’d given him. “Why are you handing me- oh.” The realization struck abruptly, as many often did. “Can no one on his ship function without me?” he asked in near disbelief.

Ezra shrugged, and left him with Hera as soon as he slipped out the doors, likely to go see Kanan. “Fine,” Alex sighed, “I’ll make the caf, just let me put on some warmer clothing, if you don’t mind,” he promised. Still, the blond took on the responsibility with a genuine smile. Hera returned it.

She went to leave, but stopped, and watched him place the ceramic piece on the shelf nearby while he pulled on two matching socks. Alex looked up, and paused, giving her an unsure gaze. “Is there something wrong?” he asked, her far-away look going right through him. Hera’s eyes met his, and she breathed in deliberately.

“Are you okay?”

He laughed. “I’m tired. I haven’t had any caf either, you know,” he teased, picking up the mug and leaving his quarters with Hera just behind him.

“Kanan got up last night. Said you were up too, but not why,” the pilot admitted.

Oh. Well, it made sense, but he had to shove the peering head of discomfort back in its box and sit on the lid before he answered. “I don’t always sleep well. But you know that, Hera,” he reminded her, and entered the galley. The man made a beeline for the caf machine, a beloved battered artifact of many wars with early mornings. His calloused hands opened canisters and shook liquids insistently, to make enough noise to pause their conversation. He hadn’t lied, but as much as Hera cared, he couldn’t stand to burden her any more than he already had after the briefing.  _ And every time before that.  _ “We’ll be under way soon, arrive undetected, and slip under the radar?”

“That the plan,” she said. His plan, she could’ve added. “Is there any reason you’re losing sleep?” Hera was not easily steered in a different direction than her line of questioning. Green-skinned hands grasped his wrists. He stopped to look at her, and because it was difficult to make anything to drink with his hands otherwise occupied.

Alex’s vision flashed over with green; almost the same as from his nightmares. He shook it off. “A few. Same ones as Kanan,”

“You shouldn’t worry about your plan. It’s a good plan, Alex. We believe in you,” she reminded him. “I believe in you. It’s going to work.”

“It should work, but…” he trailed off. A number of other plans should’ve worked, too. The  _ Ghost _ crew had proven otherwise. They hadn’t worked and he hadn’t slept because of it. “One of my mentors when I was at the Academy would tell us about how he would plan, use his plan, and toss it as soon as he began to execute it. He always needed a new plan.”

“You’re not in the Academy anymore. That part of your life is long gone,” Hera reminded him.

“Oh, I know,” he said, maybe a little too harshly, because Hera flinched, hands leaving his.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s a sensitive topic for you,” she apologized. Alex shook his head.

“It’s fine.” He busied himself with making the much desired caf even though he didn’t want it anymore, only to stop once more when the machine began to run.

“It’s not, and I’m sorry,”

They watched the liquid gold steam from Hera’s mug absentmindedly. “I should be the one apologizing. Without you, without the  _ Ghost _ , I don’t know where I’d be. I overreacted and I’m sorry,”

She nodded. “You’re entitled to some stress. I just don’t want you to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders all the time.”

He laughed, “Person first, savior of the Rebellion second?”

“Family before the Rebellion,” Hera reminded him. The caf machine dinged.

“Family before the Rebellion,” he echoed, offering a piping hot mug back to its owner. She took it gratefully, and shuffled back towards what he assumed were her quarters. “Hera,” he said to her retreating back; his expression softened though she didn’t see it at first. “Thank you for becoming and for staying my family,”

She might have teared up, but instead gave him a one-armed hug when the distance between them was closed. He accepted it gladly. “You will always be a part of our family, Alex,” Hera promised. “I’ll forever be grateful to you for joining it,”

Eventually, she let go, and went on her way, through the doors, trading places with Sabine. She held up the brilliantly colored cup up hopefully, a sleepy smile on her face. With one hand, he reached out for the painted mug and smiled. “What would you rebels do without me?” Alex teased.

* * *

In the cockpit of the _Ghost_ , all was quiet. Chopper and Hera had set the coordinates into the hyperdrive and they were underway. He took comfort in the streaks of blue starlight that whipped past the windows around him. He sat alone behind Hera’s vacant seat. Faint pings of various systems slipped past his attention. He didn’t care much to listen too closely since everything was running smoothly.

Still, with every notification they were approaching their destination, his heart would pound in fear. All the calm he’d fought to keep would flee – he was a highly trained espionage agent, dammit. This was unbecoming to an extreme. Kallus squeezed his eyes shut; he had to get himself under control. An arduous task while they were hurtling through hostile space to the center of this Empire which would have preferred nothing more than to squish him like a bug under its boot.

It was the punishment for pushing said boot off their throats as it stepped into a place of power at their expense, Kallus knew. Logically, he knew which course of action he preferred, but a part of him wondered why the kriff he’d wanted to do any of this in the first place. It had been his plan, too. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Scratch that, he hated this plan. The closer the Specters got to the capital, the worse he felt.

“I can do this,” Kallus hissed through gritted teeth. “I can. I have to,”

“You don’t have to do everything” came a younger, lighter voice. “Not alone, at least,”

Kallus nearly swore at the sneaky padawan. “Bridger, if you don’t stop doing that, I swear, you’ll regret it,”

“Woah, okay, Alex. Geez!” Ezra held up both his hands and took the colorful seat beside Kallus. “I only came in here because I could sense you freaking out,”

That came as a surprise. “You could?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if it were an accomplishment. When he saw Kallus flinch, Ezra followed suit, and shook his head. “But not really all that well. In fact, Kanan is the one worried about you. I think he’s the one who can sense it, I’m just picking up the scraps,” he joked, at which Kallus directed him a disapproving look.

“What have we told you about-?”

“Streetrat jokes,” Ezra winced. “Yeah, I know. They’re not funny, it’s a habit, I guess,”

“One you need to break,” Alex reminded him, voice easing into a gentler tone with a nudge on his part. “We aren’t going anywhere, Ezra. I wish you knew that by now. You’re family, remember?” The reassurances Hera had offered Alex felt natural coming from him. It was almost instinctive, though he knew Ezra, like him, would likely struggle to fully lean on and trust the family that had come together.

Ezra rolled his eyes. Alex didn’t need to be a force user to know that had upset him. He often used anger to hide real pain. The Bridger boy stood with a huff. “Yeah, well, just try and tell yourself that, Kallus. I’m obviously not the one who needs to hear it.” He snapped, and fled the cockpit. He burst through the doors, which opened to reveal their eavesdroppers. Ezra paid them no heed, but Alex winced. Ezra had clearly been put up to this, likely to try and get the two of them to bond like Kanan and Hera wanted. It hadn’t exactly gone well either.

The doors closed, but Alex heard what he thought sounded like Hera shoving Kanan, and the jedi yelping in pain when he hit the bulkhead of the ship. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Letting me talk you into sending Ezra in there. I should’ve been the one-”

“Oh, that is so not my fault!” Kanan shot back. “We both agreed that Ezra-”

“Is just as warm and fuzzy as Alex?” Hera retorted sarcastically.

“No, Ezra needed to hear that just as much as Alex did. They’re not as close as Alex and the rest of us, but they do care about one another. That’s why Ezra got so upset,” Kanan said. “I just need another chance,”

“You already had your chance and didn’t break ground last night.”

“I didn’t break ground last night? You were there this morning, and I didn’t see much progress on getting him to open up,” Their bickering continued down the hall. Arguments grew fainter as the retreating pair made their way where he could not hear them.

Alex sighed. Hera and Kanan, the nosy but entirely well-meaning people they were, would inevitably blame themselves for what he’d said to Ezra. After hesitating, he stood. Making this right sooner rather than later was their best bet, Alex knew. Their family wasn’t exactly the well oiled machine he was used to, and it seemed it was time for him to use a little elbow grease.

“Chopper,” he said as he walked past the droid, “Keep an eye on things for a moment. I’ll be back soon.” The droid warbled something dismissive, like he wouldn’t listen, but Alex knew Chopper would do as he’d been told even if he complained about it.

He checked his- no, their quarters, he reminded himself, first. They were close enough to be convenient at any rate. Alex was disappointed as soon as he walked through the door. He wouldn’t have been right on his first guess, he reasoned with himself, because Ezra hadn’t fully settled in or really accepted sharing the space with Alex for that matter. Something to work on for the both of them.

Ezra wasn’t in the cargo hold, or the Phantom. Shared spaces, like the mess and hallways were empty, too. He was getting frustrated; where could the boy possibly hide on a small freighter hurtling through hyperspace? At that point, he was tempted to crawl through the vents, tight a fit as it might’ve been for him.

On a whim, he tried the turret, going below to make his way to the nose gun. It wasn’t likely, he surmised. Despite Alex’s and Kanan’s friendship, the man was still Bridger’s master, and the bond was something he was likely to lean on after being so shaken. His instincts argued otherwise, so Alex relented and checked since it wouldn’t hurt anything to do so. Although he’d wanted to find the padawan, he hesitated. 

One hand hovered over the door’s control panel, Alex breathing in through his nose and then out through his mouth. He needed to do this.

At first, when he came through the doors, the room appeared empty. He sighed. Maybe it was for the best. After all, Kanan was better equipped to handle emotional teenagers, more than he was at any rate. Honestly, why had he even bothered to look?

A sniffle.  _ Ezra _ , he realized. A slow sidestep revealed the younger jedi-to-be had curled up in the gunner’s seat and was crying. Soft but quick tears lined his face. “Oh, Ezra,” Alex said, one hand resting on each of the boy’s shoulders. “Ezra, what’s wrong?” he asked, guilt cropping up at the sight.

Ezra’s body trembled, and his face remained in his knees. Long hair draped down to cover what of him wasn’t pressed into himself. “I just-” he struggled visibly with words weighing down on his shoulders. “You say we’re family; that being my family means you’ll never leave me, _but_ _that’s not true_ , Alex.”

Alex didn’t need to ask to know where this was coming from. His joining the crew and the new dynamics had been so difficult to adjust to. To Alex, it made sense Ezra was scared to lose everything all over again. “Ezra, I would never choose to turn my back on you. None of us ever will,”

“You don’t always get a choice!” The boy snapped. He jerked away from the rebel captain’s kindness as if he’d been struck. “My parents didn’t get a choice, and now they’re dead, Alex. My parents are dead. They were my family, and they didn’t get a choice; because they left me. The Empire didn’t give them one,”

His voice took on the firm military tone he’d had yet to give up completely. “Your parents chose to fight for what they believed in. We are no different from them in that respect.”

“Then you’re going to end up just like them and I-” Ezra winced, much of his anger dissipating to leave his grief open and exposed. “I won’t be able to do anything about it,” he said. “You’re my family, all of you. And my family always leaves. But this time? This time it’ll be my fault,”

Alex sighed, exasperated. “Ezra, we’re not helpless. We can defend ourselves. Besides, you should give yourself more credit. Kanan says you’ve come really far since he’s been training you. If I need you, which I may not, I have faith in you. My faith in you is not misplaced.”

“My parents promised they’d take care of themselves, too. Look how that turned out,” came the muffled miserable mumble.

At this, Alexsandr scoffed. “Be fair to yourself. That is unreasonable. They made a choice,”

“A choice? They got a choice and made the decision to leave me alone.” Even then his bitterness seeped from him. When it was gone, it was replaced by a writhing kind of agony.

Alex sighed. Frustration rippled through his once impermeable patience. “You aren’t given choices. You don’t just get them, it’s not that simple. You make them. Especially when they are not given to you, when it’s more difficult to decide to make a choice no one has made available to you,” he said firmly. “You make the choices you believe in. The Empire would strike us down without a second thought even if we’d done nothing but obeyed and bowed our heads. So what choice do I make, or did your parents make? You? The rest of us here on the  _ Ghost _ ?” 

Ezra shrugged, but wiped his tears and looked up at Alex with hopeful eyes. 

“We make the choice to strike back; to strike first if we can,” he said. “And that choice, not given to us, we make because it’s what we believe in.”

Alex didn’t know it at the time, but Kanan and Hera were in the cockpit above them in silent celebration. She beamed at the jedi and he shook his head in disbelief. Hera, it seemed, had been right after all. That should never have come into question, a wiser part of him knew, even if he didn’t say it out loud. 

“Way to go, buddy,” he said softly, leaned forward in his seat to search the vastness of blue hyperspace with his eyes, though his mind was lightyears away on its own.

* * *

It took nearly a full day and night for them to reach the Imperial capital. They would alternate shifts, switching every few hours so no one of them was exhausted when it was time to begin. Alex slept surprisingly well, despite the fact that he’d had his nerves frayed so badly beforehand. It seemed the galaxy was finally going to give him a break after weeks of stress and tempers running high. He took it with a grain of salt, as he did most things. 

Still, it was nice to finally rest. 

About an hour before they were due to come out of hyperspace, Kallus was still out cold. The crew of the _Ghost_ stood outside his door, where Ezra flatly refused to listen.

“No. I already told you guys, I did it yesterday. He almost skinned me alive. No.” He crossed his arms. “Hera, you do it.”

“Oh, no. I am not playing any part of this. My ship, my orders, someone else is doing it. Kanan, how about-?”

“Not doing it. Blue eyes narrowed. “Shouldn’t you of all people be happy he’s sleeping well for the first time in recent memory?”

Hera sighed. “I am happy, but it’s not like we can just leave him like this?”

“Why not?” Sabine asked. “Alex works hard, let him have a break. At least a few more minutes,”

“That’s exactly why we can’t. Sabine.” The twi’lek said, but she wasn’t happy about it. “The longer we wait, the more stressed he’ll be when he does wake up, not to mention he’ll be upset we didn’t wake him up when we could’ve. Even if he wasn’t critical to the success of the mission, he’s worked too hard on this to not see it through to the end.” Hera reminded the young Mandalorian.

“I work hard, too. We all do, and we don’t always need to be so involved in every mission,” Sabine argued.

“Alex is different, Sabine.” Kanan said gently. “You know he is. You know why he has to do this; how important it is.”

“Oh, so we’re not important?”

“That is not what Kanan said, and you know it!” Ezra shot back.

The Specters began to argue more fervently, each with a different point, and louder voice. Chopper moaned. This was so pitiful. Why did he even bother with these big babies anyways? They were distracted enough he knew, that they wouldn’t notice him wheeling into the man in question’s quarters, or him prodding the late sleeper with one claw.

Kallus didn’t notice either. Chopper said something foul, grumbling about malfunctioning organics, and spun wildly around, waving his arms while he beeped furiously. Nothing. He let out a not so dejected sigh, readied a prod, and just as Kallus’ eyes cracked open, Chopper shocked him in the leg.

The cry of pain, followed by a thud and swear when he jumped up and smacked his head on Ezra’s bunk were, in fact, enough to get the other Specters’ attention. “Blast it, droid! What were you thinking, binary bucket of bolts!”

He warbled apathetically, and waved one of his arms to dismiss Kallus’ fury.

“Sleeping like the dead? Oh, well I’ll show you what just  _ dead _ looks like, you heaping scrap pile!” Kallus snapped.

Hera started disapprovingly down at Chopper. “Not okay, Chop.”

Chopper would have rolled his eyes if he could’ve. It wasn’t like any of them were going to do it. He’d unburdened them all, but instead of thanking him, they were complaining and berating him. It wouldn’t be the last time, he knew, but he could’ve cared less that he’d shocked Kallus if not for the fact that Hera was upset.

They had work to do. He warbled a reluctant agreement but didn’t apologize when he left the room. For Hera, it was enough.

“Rise and shine, Alex. We’re almost there,” she said, patting his leg as if to say: ‘Sorry, but it’s time to use them for something besides target practice. Then, the rest of the  _ Ghost _ ’s crew departed, and he sighed. Alone once more, he would’ve been tempted to fall asleep again if not for one small detail.

They were almost there.

His hands did not tremble when he tied his boots, nor when he walked to the bridge and took his seat. The rest of the Specters were already there. Kallus could have paid attention, but he didn’t remember getting dressed, much less arriving at the nose of the  _ Ghost _ .

He reached one gloved hand up to fiddle with the wrappings of his bo-rifle when he flinched. It wasn’t there, not resting on his back like he’d gotten so used to. Instead, he fiddled with cool air, an emptiness eating away at him in more ways than one. Alex closed his eyes. He was moving in slow motion while the world around him zipped past in an indiscernible race of color and sound.

Hera was adjusting the- whatsitdoesit above her head, when she turned around and smiled at him. That smile began to fade when he started back at her blankly. Blast, had she said something to him? And if she had, what had it been? What was he supposed to say to her?

‘Yes.’ His mind supplied unhelpfully. Well, not helpful, but not a bad start. He nodded, and Hera’s laughter rang in his ears.

“I figured you would, but a blaster is just as deadly as a bo-rifle in your hands,” she said, as if she were teasing. Kallus smiled back weakly, and this time Hera frowned at him. “What’s gotten into you? Did Chopper fry your brains, too?  _ Ghost _ to Captain Kallus, come in, Alex,”

“I’m here.” Kallus said firmly. “Just… thinking, is all,”

“Alexsandr Kallus,” Hera sighed. “You wouldn’t by any chance be lying to me, would you?”

“Hera Syndulla,” he mimicked the exasperation with a teasing smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I am, truly, fine. I promise.”

“Alex,” She sighed, and turned in her seat to say something while fully facing him when the navicomputer and hyperdrive clamored for her attention, beeping frantically. “We’re coming out of hyperspace. Hang on.” The twi’lek said. She put on her serious face, and a narrow focus took control of the empathy-rich Hera that had been with him mere seconds ago. The tunnel of stars disappeared, and Hera sat up at the sight over the planet in front of them.

Kallus did, too. In all his life, he’d never seen so many Imperial battle cruisers all at once. It made him nervous, watching all of the ships loom over the planet encased in darkness. The sun was shining on the far side of the planet, but the absence of it only made the forbidden territory that much more menacing.

_ There shouldn’t be this many. There are never this many. _ Blood rushed in his ears. Hadn’t intelligence said otherwise?

“Corellian freighter,  _ Tontine _ , slow your speed and prepare for scanning.” Came the crisp order of an Imperial officer. Hera complied silently. The crew heard the engines whine as they powered low. The  _ Ghost _ crawled through space towards the blockade above the planet they were desperately trying to reach.

The rebels’ hearts raced; not even Kanan could hide his nervousness. Alex closed his eyes.  _ Please. Oh, please let this work.  _ Well, if it didn’t, he wouldn’t have to live with himself for very long. The guilt of getting the Specters killed would die with the  _ Ghost _ . Still, Alex gripped the fabric of his pants and prayed.

“ _ Tontine _ ,” the Imperial officer said firmly, and paused. Alexsandr’s lungs screamed at him; why wasn’t he breathing? “You are cleared. Continue on your present course.”

Alex wasn’t the only one who was relieved. Hera kept on their path, and it was one of the few times the members of the Rebellion were happy to comply with an Imperial directive. The  _ Ghost  _ slipped past the Imperial blockade without so much as a hiccup.

“No turning back now, team,” Kanan said. He didn’t need to. The weight of their mission sunk its claws into their hearts even deeper. They knew this mission inside and out, with an aching familiarity. “Ezra, Sabine, are you ready?”

Sabine nodded, while whatever had been gripping Ezra by the throat loosened its hold on him enough that he mustered a squeak. “Sure.”

“Do your worst, Imps,” Sabine muttered. A long painful bitterness rose up in her eyes and she scowled. “We’ve got you one better,”

Kallus shuddered. Sabine was deadly, and her blade was always sharp. Explosives always came hand in hand with her threats. The young mandalorian always saw to it that those promises were kept, and she was a valuable resource because of it. At least that hatred wouldn’t ever be directed at him, he thought, a strange sort of relief letting loose at the thought. He’d hate to  _ not _ be on her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, Zeb isn’t here yet, but I promise he’ll be a pretty big part of the plot, it’s a Kalluzeb fic, after all. I really want to get at the relationships between Kallus and the rest of the Ghost crew, because that is a really big part of the story. Seeing how Kallus’ place has been molded into a part of the team should plant some inklings as to why he is where he is, and if they don’t break my heart, I don’t know what else will. We’ll see what the deal is with Zeb is in the next part, fingers crossed. 
> 
> Also, side note, I finished the other chapter I was working on before posting this, and I surprised myself because I was feeling blocked and then I went back to the original outline and the way I first wanted to write that part and it just resonated so much better and the writing flowed and became less forced, ahhhh, it’s going to be great, this fic is (at least to me) really going to be worth it. Fingers crossed :)
> 
> It’s looking like I’ll update once a week on Friday’s, so if you’re following the story, that’s when there should be a new part as it goes along. 


	3. The Imperial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kallus and the Spectres struggle with achieving the task set out for them, and struggle with the identity of their foe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to the lovely @shipsfrecklesandhorseface for giving incredible help to this fic. Without them, this chapter would not be half as good, and neither would what's to come. Best beta ever! I am so profoundly grateful.
> 
> Whaaat? Hey, look, wow I kept my word and updated on time!

The _Ghost_ crew focused on their missions with such precision, it was impossible for them to have realized what was happening in the meantime. Access to the highly restricted facilities and their droids was easily obtained when Ezra and Sabine tore their way through the security systems and into the central terminal’s’ command center where all the offline droids lied in wait. They weren’t much less intimidating even when powered down and recharging, Kallus noted. 

He remembered the look Sabine had given him before the last infiltration they'd done. The _Ghost_ was on course, moving through the upper atmosphere at Hera’s bidding, and Sabine was in the cargo bay with them, arms crossed and talking intensely to Kanan. He nodded, and moved over towards Ezra, while Sabine moved past crates and fuel cells to meet him across the large open room. 

_“Alex,” Sabine paused, before drawing him into a hug. “You be careful,”_

_He laughed, almost surprised when she backed away. “I will be.”_

_“I mean it,” she said. “Don’t be stupid or heroic, just get it done and come back in one piece.”_

_“I will. Don’t worry about it.” he said, maybe a little too defensively._

_She rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm. “Very convincing.” She said sarcastically._

_“I will do my best, Wren.”_

_“Bring it, Kallus,” she laughed, looking down at the ray shield that disappeared at their feet. The building came into view as Hera dipped below the cloudbank._

_“Get ready to jump!” She said over the intercom. Kanan and Ezra went first. Sabine and Kallus stayed behind, and she pulled on her colorful helmet._

_“You ready?” Her slightly muffled voice came through the mask._

_“Yes,” He lied. The two of them looked up from the ground, and before they changed their minds, they jumped._

The first terminal they’d hit was remote, near the outskirts of the most concentrated region of Imperial reign. Once they’d made their way through the blockade in the early hours of the morning, the Spectres had commandeered those droids before the planet’s sun had even risen.

Days passed after their arrival, and they made their way across the planet’s surface in a dance of espionage and sneaking around. Their movements from terminal to terminal were silent, and the _Ghost_ cut through the air with ease. Bouncing from spaceport to spaceport, Hera flew them in the in-between moments of their otherwise back to back missions. She took every opportunity to conceal their identity and hide their trail, knowing it would only take one slip up to give their position away, but under no uncertain terms would the Rebellion risk the sheer amount of work put into this operation.

Their team was not the only one, but the most heavily burdened of them, and over a week after their arrival, Alex felt his weakened, tired, beat down body wrestle his determination to the ground. The Spectres had narrowly avoided detection with a number of close calls. The number was too high for Kanan’s liking, much less Alex’s. 

Alex had never been levitated by Kanan mere feet above a deadly murder droid before, but it was one of the main reasons he’d thought the Spectres were cutting it too close. Ezra had unintentionally alerted one of the droids they were hoping to reprogram while the team was escaping from the security terminal together, and Alex had nowhere to go but up. 

His heart beat in that way only a rock beats on the earth, tearing his insides apart and howling in its cage as it pounded on its bearer’s ribs. It was not, he decided, an exercise he or his resolve dared to consider repeating afterwards. With any luck, they wouldn’t have to once it was all said and done.

Ezra apologized a thousand times and he probably believed Alex was being short with him after the incident because Alex was angry. While his frantically beating heart almost burst in his ribcage in horror once those metal optics had lit up, frayed nerves were to blame for his brusque nature, not anger. He’d have to find time to tell Ezra as much, but after they’d made it back onto the _Ghost_ , he didn’t want to do anything but sleep.

The rest of the team felt the same so they decided to rest. No sheer force of will could compensate for the mistakes caused by exhaustion, Alex knew from experience. 

The nights before, when darkness fell, so did Ales strength fail. Simply put, Alex was exhausted. They Spectres had nearly been caught twice on the last run, and each of the crewmembers knew it was time to call it a night. Alex's face crumpled the pillow beneath it gladly as he barely managed to kick off his boots. Ezra followed suit up above. It didn't take long for the young Jedi to start snoring, leaving Alex to his thoughts, a stream of consciousness that led into dreams where he was being chased by crumbling buildings with windows for eyes and gates for mouths. 

Alex jolted awake, and was greeted by only darkness. Ezra snored, and turned over in his sleep in the bunk above, while Alex wiped the sweat off his forehead. _It’s just a dream. It’s not real. You’re going to be fine, just focus on the mission._ Alex threw off his covers and went into the mess to make caf like he always did, mentally preparing himself for the last leg of their mission. Hera had wished them luck, and dropped them off in the city as close as she dared, with the usual reminder to call if things went haywire, telling them she would be nearby.

He and the Spectres, minus Hera and Chopper, wandered through the streets early that morning. Alex struggled to shake the feeling that the further the sun rose, the more things would be difficult. Of course breaking into secure facilities in broad daylight wasn’t their best bet, but their plan was solid. Kanan and Ezra split off to secure their entry into the security terminal, and Alex told himself as convincingly as he could muster that everything would be fine.

Looking at the largest and final terminal in the heart of the capital, Alex hoped it wasn’t merely wishful thinking that things would work out. Alongside the most colorful member of the _Ghost’s_ crew, he stood in front of an enormous structure looming over the city market’s outskirts. The sun crept up the black inky blue of the night sky, whispering light and warmth to the horizon. “The sun is smiling upon you,” said a passerby, Rodian, by the looks of him.

Kallus nearly had a stroke. Later he would have denied the fact he’d reacted in such a way, but the look from the adjacent spectre made it near impossible in the moment. “Nice day today,” Sabine snorted. A light punch to his arm accompanied the one to his bruised ego.

“Incorrigible Mandalorian,” he sneered back. His heart wasn’t in it; Sabine could tell, because she offered a fleeting smile too quick for anyone besides him to see. He tried to replicate it, but wasn’t sure it was successful, or convincing for that matter. His face warmed, a slight blush creeping and giving him away. 

“You good to go?” She asked. He didn’t need to see her to know she was watching him as intensely as he was searching for the flicker of light – ah, there it was.

Kallus nodded, this time more firmly. “We both are. Ezra’s gotten in. We need to move quickly.” The two slipped through the crowd, their easily assumable civilian status blending them in. Neither noticed the smartly dressed lasat staring from across the square, or how a part of him left that place the moment they had. A befuddled, pained warrior stayed behind, wishing they hadn’t gone, though he did not know why.

* * *

In the station, it was eerily silent. Once the door outside closed behind them, they’d been cut off from it all. Noise, music, even people. Compared to the vivacious nature of the marketplace square just outside, the new shiny building felt wrong next to the ancient stone architecture surrounding it. The stone outside felt warm and inviting while the metal made his blood run ice cold. Kallus shuddered. He heard only the gentle thrum of engines. There was no life here.

“Got it,” Ezra said, just as the blast doors opened to reveal one long empty hallway. The rebels stepped through the doorway, and the large gliding doorway, too, sealed them in. “

“Good work spectre-six,” Kanan said, one hand briefly patting Ezra’s shoulder. “You and I will head in first and clear a path.”

“And spectre-five and I will follow?” Kallus double checked. Force of habit, Kanan knew.

The Jedi nodded. “Just like before. This is the last one, but the most important, so let’s do this right and go home.” They nodded, letting the Master and Padawan move onwards while Sabine and Kallus followed at a safe distance. It really was just like before. The mission had become a mantra, with them hitting three, sometimes four terminals a day. And this was the last one, but Kanan hadn’t been understating it when he said it had been the most important.

This mission would make or break the efforts of the Rebellion everywhere else on the planet.

“So, why did we leave this one for last?” Sabine asked, careful not to let her voice carry in the empty air.

Kallus, blaster in hand, peered around a corner and immediately pressed himself against the wall, pulling Sabine in the same direction. She stumbled, but the sound her armor made when it tapped the metal walls while one hand went for her second holstered blaster was the only noise they made. They looked across the junction, where Ezra and Kanan mirrored them. Kanan pressed one finger to his mouth and shook his head, motioning for Ezra to stop working on the panel. Ezra held himself as still as he could.

A low robotic growl kept any of them from speaking. Ezra’s eyes widened, Sabine’s face was hidden by her helmet, and Kallus was entirely confident his expression matched Kanan’s. A single line appeared in his forehead, eyes narrowed only slightly, with the rest of his face entirely neutral. Their unruly, longer hair did not dare slip from its tie behind either of their heads. As deadly as Kanan was with a blaster, Kallus knew better than to assume the saber on Kanan’s belt would go unignited.

Their best bet was to wait. If they waited, there was a high probability that the sentry droid would pass by on its routine movement through the terminal. Sabine twitched, and Ezra looked between Sabine’s restlessness and the hallway where they could hear but not see the droid. Kanan clenched his jaw and shook his head slowly at Sabine. Alex turned to guide her hands into gripping her blasters more relaxed. 

All three of the other teammates watched Kanan’s free hand inch across his body to reach for his lightsaber hilt. Kanan’s hand did quite grasp the mighty saber, but the growing nervousness on Kanan’s face indicated he wasn’t far off from doing so. The longer they waited, the faster the anxiety amongst them grew, like a weed sneaking its vines through their minds and sinking thorns into their skin when they tried to pull themselves free of it.

A garbled sound of clicks and whirrs, followed by the slight tremble of the floor underneath large metal feet that moved away from their hiding places, sent relief coursing through the unlikely band. Kanan’s shoulders sagged, Ezra toppled over off his feet and onto the floor, and Sabine cautiously returned her blasters back to her holsters. Alex followed suit, allowing his body to lose some, but not all, of its tension.

“We left this station for last,” Alex said lowly, watching Ezra resume working on the blast door lock, “Because if we in any way compromise this part of the network and have not accounted for every single contingency plan for the failure of these central sentry droids, they will be reset, and kill us all.” Alex could not tell definitively, but Sabine’s body language changed in such a way she appeared all the more nervous for his answer.

Ezra bit back a shout when the door panel he was working on shocked his fingers. The singed black ends of those nimble hands were no stranger to the sensation after this had happened more than once, but Ezra had wasted no effort in telling them exactly how much it still hurt. Chopper’s presence was sorely missed, but they knew the security network went far beyond simple locking mechanisms and doors. If an unauthorized droid was active in the Imperial network, on the surface of the capital, a shuttle ride’s distance from the Empire’s Palace;they would all be dead within seconds of being revealed. Not even Kallus’s inexhaustible knowledge of the world would have helped them then.

Any doors in their way, Ezra, opened, with Kanan standing guard over him. Those watchful eyes took in the entirety of their surroundings. While Kallus and Sabine were also assigned the task of keeping watch, Kallus suspected Kanan was more adept at it than the two of them combined. That territory came with his status as a Jedi, Alexsandr knew, but it never failed to shock him every moment he thought he was comfortable with his understanding of the cosmic Force.

As much of a rough start the two had had in their relationship, the rocky road of becoming Master and Apprentice had become smooth, even if winding. It was only natural they were paired together. Kallus looked to Sabine, a warrior, yes, but her war was not only on the battlefield, much like his own. If they were made opposites in every other way, that would still be how they connected.

In the past, he’d have been naïve (or perhaps conceited) enough to believe that he had her back in this situation, but time had shown him many things. One of which was Sabine Wren did not need anyone to watch her back, and certainly not someone like him. Not usually, anyways. He watched as she moved with her blaster pointed downwards. Her eyes were still as obscured as ever by that helmet, but he knew she was combing the hallways for anything that dared to move. Kallus could picture the expression she wore easily.

“Finally!” Ezra broke the silence just as the doors opened for them across the hallway junction from them. He and Kanan moved forwards when there was just enough room, and the door control panel was replaced as if it had never been moved to begin with. The path was clear, Kallus determined, watching the two Jedi move further along their path. Kallus followed Sabine out from their cover to cross the junction when a tiny gasp sent fear down their spines. It was as if blades had been plunged into every single one of his bones.

The two warriors turned immediately; blasters ready to face their assailant. A small child, purple, with pointed ears that stuck out of her hair. Stripes crossed her body everywhere but her face. She squealed, little four-fingered hands lifting from their clutches in her beautiful, ornate dress. “Woah- a _Mandalorian!_ ” she breathed in awe.

Sabine had a colorful vocabulary to match the rest of her personality, he knew. She however, surprised him, and waved at the little child with brilliantly painted colors on the back of her hand. “Hey there, little one,”

She squealed. “Your armor is so pretty! Oh, I love it!”

Sabine laughed. “Thank you. Your dress is _so_ pretty, too. I think you look like a princess.”

“Are _you_ a Mandalorian, too?”

“No,” he admitted, but realizing what Sabine was doing, he decided to take on a playful mannerism. “Are you?”

She sighed with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, jumping up where she stood and giggled. “No, silly!”

“No?” he asked, smiling down at her. “Are you sure? You could be!”

Sabine nodded. “You could be, it’s true,”

“You’re both silly! I’m not a Mandalorian!”

“Well, what are you doing here, not a Mandalorian?” Alex asked.

“I’m here to see the droids! I heard nobody visits them and I realized they must be so sad and lonely so I asked my grandmother if I could come here and cheer them up because they protect us so good!”

“They protect you so well, huh?” Alex asked, and couldn’t help when his face fell. “That’s very nice of them, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah! Wait until you meet my other protector! He’s a guard, and he’s awesome!” she squealed. The small child turned and ran down the hallway shouting: “Uncle Captain! Come meet my new friend, she’s a Mandalorian!” came the awestruck joy-filled declaration of their unlikely acquaintance.

“Time to go,” Kallus advised as soon as she was out of sight.

“Good idea,” Sabine nodded. They slipped through the now closing doors of the adjoining hallway, and were gone before the two returned.

“Mandalorian?” a gruff voice asked as he was led by the tiny lasat girl. “I don’t see any Mandalorians here,”

“But she was here! I saw her!” She said sadly.

“I believe you,” her uncle said, “But it doesn’t look like she’s here right now, little one,”

More than she was sad, she seemed crestfallen at the sight of the vacant junction. She pouted, disappointment, and a tad bit of frustration rippling at the surface. “I wish she’d stayed,” the little lasat said dejectedly. “She and her friend were so nice!”

“I’m sure they were,” her companion said gently. It was far better, and wiser still, to humor the girl than to risk upsetting her by saying he didn’t believe her, and to be honest, he didn’t. “Was her friend a Mandalorian, too?”

She rolled her eyes, as if it were obvious. “No, silly. He wasn't a Mandalorian, he was just her friend!”

“Well, being the friend of a Mandalorian is an amazing thing, and a great honor, you know,” he said, rising to his full height and hoping to cheer her up so they could continue on their way.

“Am _I_ a mandalorian’s friend?” she asked hopefully.

He chuckled, steering her away from the hallway and towards their destination. “I’m sure you are, Little Princess. I’m sure you are.”

Just like that, Orrelios was gone, steering his small companion along their way as she chattered about all the Mandalorian friends she planned to make, and he nodded, as he should, most attentively.

“That was close,” Kallus whispered after the Lasats had passed. 

“Too close,” Kanan agreed. “We cannot let that happen again,”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Sabine hissed, immediately defensive.

“Yeah, it wasn’t Sabine’s fault,” Ezra chimed in a little too eagerly. All three of them stared, and he blushed, mumbling something under his breath and returning his focus to splicing two different wires together.

Kanan sighed. “It was no one’s fault, we just have to be more careful. This terminal is the biggest and most important one of them all. We always knew there was the risk of it being more heavily guarded than the others, not to mention more dangerous. We just need to be on guard and ready for anything. One more close call could be all that stands between us and failure. I for one don’t want to press our luck.”

“Well, I thought it was just this door between us and completing the rest of our mission–” the blast doors parted to reveal a familiar looking command center– “But yeah, I’m sure that works, too.” Ezra grinned as he rose from the floor.

Kallus rolled his eyes. “Let’s get to work. Sabine, you’re up. It is time for your craftsmanship to shine. Get these droids reprogrammed as soon as possible,”

“I’m on it,” she said. Her helmet rested on the console next to where she worked, and the rest of them could do little more than wait. Ezra hovered, not too subtly walking past her every moment he could, and Kanan stood by the doorway opposite where they had come in, peering out into the massive open room of the terminal. 

Glass walls were all that stood between them and thousands of murder bots, all programmed with the sole purpose of finding and butchering rebels. 

_Butcher. How ironic._ He scanned the thousands of empty charging stations all around them, frowning. There were more of them outside of those walls, lurking in the streets, waiting to strike. He glazed over the identical structures a dozen times, tired eyes missing only a change of scenery when he saw it: a flicker of movement.

It was too quick and colorful to be a droid returning to his power station, he knew. Kallus watched the place where it had disappeared and it did not resurface. He made a quick decision. Blaster in-hand, Kallus slipped through the doors opposite where they’d entered. 

“Where are you going?” Kanan hissed, moving across to reach him before he ventured out onto the open bridge leading to a complicated network of crossings and pathways. 

“I saw something down below. It wasn’t a droid,” Kallus said before Kanan could even suggest otherwise. “I have a feeling. Trust me, alright? I’ll investigate and report back with my findings. It should be nothing, but we can’t take any chances, Kanan. You know this.”

Kanan sighed, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Fine. But do it quickly, and _be_ careful. If you get caught-”

“I know.” Kallus scowled. “You’ll have to leave me behind. I know how things like this work.”

“Alex,” Kanan whispered. “We can’t leave you behind. We won’t. Hera says the mission comes before everything else, but that doesn’t include family. I know you don’t want us to come looking for you if things go wrong, so just be careful, okay?”

_Oh._ He should’ve seen that one coming, but it made sense. “Then don’t. I can take care of myself.” Slipping down the ladder without another word, he left Kanan behind. His focus, they both knew, was needed elsewhere.

He didn’t hear a now scowling Kanan mutter under his breath. “You don’t have to, Alex. That’s the point.”

Although doubt clamored for his attention, he waved it off. He’d seen something, and he was far better off going with his instincts than he was yielding to his insecurities. Kallus looked up again at the command station he’d come from, where Kanan had returned to, and back down at the bottom of the almost pitch black chasm. This was no good; he needed to go further down to see anything.

Down he went, the faint brush of stale air flying across his skin quickly as he slid down ladder after ladder towards that flicker of light and color, but further from his friends. He’d made it down to the bottom grate, where most of the charging droids loomed over him. One hand over the other, Kallus carried that blaser with a death grip. His jaw clenched, he wondered where that movement could’ve come from when a flashlight’s beam shone in his eyes from below. 

Kallus cried out in surprise at the same moment the wielder shouted, and a blaster bolt flew up from between the grate bars and into his arm. He staggered, but managed to hold onto his weapon with one hand, and fired back. If the cry of pain was any indication, he’d gotten at least one of them.

He jumped down below the floor, into the crevice where they were hiding, blasters aimed at his head. 

“You!” came an enraged woman’s voice, one he’d heard before, too.

“Leigh?” he demanded in shock. “How did you-? What’re you doing here? Are you insane?”

“You shot him!” She spat, pressing gauze to her companion’s chest. Kallus hadn’t missed his mark it seemed. “I knew it! Traitor! Brainwashed, Imperial scum!”

Kallus scoffed, but when the click of a blaster to his side drew his attention, he pointed his in the direction of his newest foe. “He fired first, Gerrera. It was self-defense. You’re the ones attacking me unprovoked!”

“You had a blaster pointed at our heads!”

“Oh it was pointed at the ground you melodramatic womp rat, so calm down!”

The big burly rebel to his side snarled. “Drop it!” 

“In your dreams.” Kallus hissed back.

“You tried to kill us! I wonder what dear Senator Mothma will have to say about that, Alexsandr,” Leigh said, a tad too gleeful for his stomach’s sake.

Kallus bit back a few other less savory comments. Cool heads prevailed first in battle, his training and experience had taught him. Leigh didn’t have that same mentality, she proved. “She’ll want to know what you were doing here. How are you going to explain that to the senator?” 

Leigh scoffed. “She already knows I don’t trust you.”

“And that will be enough to justify you compromising this mission?” Kallus's eyes narrowed. “We need this to work, Leigh. Not just for me, or for the Rebellion. The hope of the free galaxy depends on it. I will not let your personal feelings about me destroy what we have all worked so hard to achieve.”

“Are you going to shoot me, too?” She taunted. The eyes that flickered over to his blaster were morphed with fear. 

He shook his head. “No, I am not you, Leigh, and I am not your father. Now, get out of here, all of you, before you let the whole city know you’re here.”

Leigh raised an eyebrow. “You’re letting us go? Just like that?”

“Do not get caught. We’re not the only ones in this station.” He warned her. 

The member of her crew who was on his feet was still on guard, but Leigh, and the downed rebel from Saw’s original force, were rising to their feet as well as they could in the space, barely tall enough to crouch in. Their balance was questionable at best, and their other uninjured teammate helped Leigh get her injured comrade off the floor. 

He nodded, opening his mouth to speak again when the blow came. 

The back of his head protested immediately when something made rather aggressive contact with it. He grunted in pain and landed on the cold metal, injured arm first.

Kallus cried out, because blast it, it hurt, but Leigh cackled. “Oh, this is too perfect. Are you serious? Oh, starts, and you set it up so perfectly!” She grinned in near disbelief. “Seriously? ‘We’re not the only ones in this station’? Oh, Alexandr, and you didn’t know how right you were!” 

A cuff clicked around one of his wrists and a nearby pipe, although Kallus couldn’t see which one. One hand reached for his blaster, but she kicked it out of his hand.

Both image and sound danced in his head, anger making him fumble with his weakening grasp on reality. “You tricked me!” Kallus flinched at the ache in his skull. _I’m actually kind of impressed._ He might have said if not for the very real danger of the situation at hand.

“Like you haven’t deceived everyone in rebel command! They think you’re so good; so precious! Well, after this-” she shoved something into his weakened hand “-They’ll never doubt me again.”

What was she-? “Oh, no. Leigh. Leigh, do not do this.”

“I think I preferred it when you called me Gerrera.” she snorted. “Sorry. Guess you should’ve shot me after all, rebel wannabe. Or at least not have made an enemy out of the Gerreras,”

“Leigh, _no_. You’re making a mistake,” Alex’s eyes were wide; he couldn’t help the fact that he was wildly out of control. 

“No, a mistake would be letting go of that dead man’s switch which, by the way, has a limited range. Go too far, and boom!” She pointed towards the blinking red countdown. “That chrono won’t be so reliable after all, dear Alexsandr.”

“Don’t do this. This isn’t something you can come back from!” Kallus managed, sitting up and yanking on the cuff. “It will haunt you till the end of your days, no matter what brave face you manage to put on for everyone else.”

Leigh Gerrera paused and snatched up Kallus’s blaster. For a moment, her finger tapped the cool metal, those gears in her head turning. Kallus dared to hope he’d gotten through to her. Blast it, his whole life was built on hope. However, sneering down at him, she dispelled any sort of notion he’d had she could be reasoned with. “No, I don’t think I will. Now, sit tight while I enjoy the show. Oh, right! You don’t have any other option. Almost forgot about that part.” 

Leigh rolled her eyes and with a shake of her head, she patted Kallus’s head with a sinister smile before kicking him in the side. He grimaced and pulled away, knowing he was fairly limited in his defensive options. Leigh strode away with a mercenary on either side, and even her injured companion was on his feet and leaving him behind. 

He fought hard not to panic.

The breathing exercises had their limits, so he trembled, quick shallow breaths wracking his body. Leigh had disarmed him and isolated him deep in enemy territory but, as he recalled, they were not the only ones in the station. The kit, the droids, and the Spectres were also roaming the halls of this Imperial facility, and if he was lucky, he would find a way to join them. 

His comm. Where was his comm? As if on cue, he looked up to see the pesky little thing in a groove of the metal grate just above him. It was where Leigh’s goons had shot him, and where he had dropped it most likely.

Leigh planned this out well, yes, but he wouldn’t roll over and let her win, not without putting up a fight. He looked between the pipe he was chained to and the thing he desperately needed.

Alex made a decision. Careful not to let go of the detonator, he leaned back closer to where he’d been cuffed to the pipe and kicked the grate above his head with everything he had. Luckily, Alex was tall, and the space was not, and his boot made contact with the grate. A deafening metal clang echoed his eardrums. The comm hadn’t moved but he would not be deterred. The bottom of his boot hit the grate again and again, but it wouldn’t budge past a pathetic rattle. _Blast it._

He cried out in frustration, arm aching and hand sweating from how tight he was gripping the deadly metal cylinder. Though his resolve had been conditioned to survive even the worst of circumstances, discouragement tore through his fragile self-confidence and, Alex had to think of another way around this obstacle, because this was clearly not going to work, and if he wasn’t careful, one of those droids would investigate the oddity.

He was surprised the shooting hadn’t activated them. _Okay. Okay, okay, okay, think Kallus, think._ He turned his gaze towards the pipe he was cuffed to, head tilting to the side. The glyphs were difficult, but not impossible for him to make out, and his eyes widened. _Cold. It says cold. It’s a cooling system._

He inhaled sharply, and calloused fingers wove their way into his sweat-heavy hair. The action did little to ground him in that moment. He was no better off for it, and instead he unfolded his body and just breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Alex steeled his nerves, and turned his head, jaw flexed to stare icily at the pipe he was tethered to. It was time he did something about it. He gritted his teeth, braced his aching arm, and pulled on the cuffs. It hurt and, at first, he bit back cries of pain. That only lasted so long.

He felt his resolve crumble and, the longer he fought it off, the worse it seemed to hurt. After one particularly strong yank, he tumbled to the ground, his injury searing. His arm burned almost as bad as when the initial blaster bolt had gone through it. Alex laid there for a moment,, muffled groans of pain and breathing through his teeth the only sounds to be heard. 

A cooling system, Alex knew, was usually one of the safest systems in any given structure, but its components were notably volatile when the gas was no longer compressed into a liquid form. He had to find a way to get both the gas and himself free. He nodded to himself; yes, this could work. Alex shifted his body and though his arm kept him from twisting too much, he exhaled as steadily as he could muster. 

He kicked the pipe as hard as he could, expending what energy he had left in one last ditch effort to escape. He prayed to anything that might listen; sweat dripped down his face, matting his hair. The pipe shuddered, and dislodged itself at the sealant, fracturing, and coolant hissed out of the pipe. It burned, and he shouted as he pulled the cuff off of the other end of the pipe hissing cold air onto the bomb. 

_That should not have worked, but I am so glad it did._ Alex rubbed his wrist and furious hand apologetically. 

Alex scrambled back up to the edge of the grate, one hand and the opposite forearm pushing himself up onto the metal where he scooped up his comm-link with his free hand. Luckily it was just within reach. Alex heaved a blissful sigh. Stars, he was so relieved. Fumbling with the comm, he failed to fight off tremors when he slipped up and nearly fell off the metal grate.

With a bit of effort and awkward wiggling, Alex hit the floor. He could not have cared less if a dozen metal lines were pressed into his reddening skin; he’d gotten to his comm. 

“Come in, Spectre-1,” he croaked. He sounded nearly as awful as he felt. When Kanan didn’t reply, his heart sank. “Spectre-1, come in. Kanan? Kanan, are you there? Please respond!”

Silence reigned, and he felt his body tense in horror. _No, no, no this was bad. This was very bad._ Alex took in a choked rush of air and wracked his brain, because what else was he supposed to do? 

The comm crackled to life, and he almost sobbed in relief. “Kallus, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He squeezed his eyes closed; now was not the time to be focused on anything but the task at hand. “I was right. Leigh, she’s here, or at least she was here, and she has done something terrible, something truly terrible.”

Kanan was silent for a moment. “How bad is it?”

He took a deep unsteady breath. “Kanan, the entire terminal is going to explode. She’s rigged the facility with bombs.”

“What?” Kanan shouted. “Where are you? How long do we have?”

“Not long. She escaped.”

“Alex,” Kanan pressed. “Where are you?” 

Alex took one shaky breath in, clenching both cylinders so tightly that he feared he might crush them. “Stuck. With a bomb.”

“What?” came the voices of the three Spectres over the comm. They all began to shout at him and each other over the comm. None of it was helpful. In fact, the yelling surprised him enough he fumbled with the comm and dropped it again. The connection went dead, and panic set in. 

At first, when he heard the sound, he dared to hope. _It’s Kanan, the other spectres,_ he thought. Alex pushed himself off the floor and snatched up the comm while he wrestled with the burn in his arm. He considered re-establishing the link when he decided, instead, to sit up and look for the source of the noise, the quick footsteps approaching his position. The middle of the large open chamber was dimly lit, and it was difficult to see through the darkness and find what exactly was coming towards him. He squinted, the echoes of those nimble feet moving was something his mind recognized, but from where? Where had he heard those steps before? They were not heavy or slow enough to be a droid and didn’t belong to any of the Spectres for that matter. So, what was-?

“Uncle _Okorre_!” came the sing-song giggle. It struck terror into Alex’s very being. “Come on, hurry!” 

_No, not her,_ he pleaded. Kriff the mission, this woke an entirely different part of him he hadn’t sought out in ages. No matter which cosmic force he conjured up to beg, nothing seemed to give; his reality did not change. 

“Patience, little one. I’m hurrying.” A second gruff voice came. He sounded amused by the little one’s antics, but their voices were all that carried themselves over to Alex; he still couldn’t see either of them.

What was he going to do? How was he going to get them out, or get his family out?

Everything changed when the little lasat ran further ahead of her companion, far enough ahead that Kallus ducked down and pressed himself against the floor. _Don’t come this way, don’t come this way._

“Hurry faster!” the kit shouted as she came closer to where Alex laid. He briefly willed himself to be invisible. It didn’t work. The flash of color in his vision was a dead giveaway. It really was the little Lasat from earlier. Unfortunately, yet again, he’d been right. He hated being right.

When Alex sat up and looked past where the kit was, he saw her companion. He felt his blood run cold. Few things were more daunting than laying your eyes upon the bo-rifle of a member of the Lasan High Honor Guard. The only question was: who was wielding the weapon? 

His answer came and stole his breath; it was the General of the High Guard, the conqueror of Coruscant, and warrior extraordinaire. 

Any chance of caution was in the wind; Alex acted before the opportunity eluded him forever. On his feet, he pushed himself off the metal grate beneath him and seized the arm of the little Lasat while that same death grip remained on that cursed detonator.

“Not _one_ more step, _Orrelios,_ ” he warned with a vicious snarl.

The Lasat froze for a number of reasons. The main one being the bleeding, half-cuffed, human who had crawled out of the floor, seized his niece, with hair soaked in sweat. He wore a crazed, but more so terrified and desperate look in his eyes. He knew those eyes.

A soldier never wanted to see what the Lasat saw in his opponent’s eyes.

“Spectre-4,” warbled the battered but not broken comm-link in Alex’s hand. “Spectre-4! Come, in Spectre-4!” Trembling hands pressed the button to speak, the little communicator able to pick up on his voice even a few feet below his face on the shoulder of that little lasat kit. “I read you, Spectre-1. We have a problem, here,”

“What kind of a problem?” Kanan sounded nervous. “What else went wrong?”

“Oh,” Alexsandr Kallus didn’t bother resisting the urge to laugh hollowly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He slowly shook his head and exhaled, staring into the eyes of Garazeb Orrelios with every ounce of unbridled hatred in his heart and the desperation he was drowning in.

_Imperials._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don'tbemaddon'tbemadI'msorry 
> 
> For those of you in the Discord, you know that this secret has been killing me for close to four months. I'm so relieved it's off my chest lol. I was driving home from work one day and realized that I had an idea, and it just had to come true. So, yes, I went ahead and switched some things up, and this is only the beginning. There is so much more to come, I'm so excited about this.
> 
> We're going to see a little bit of how this is even possible to begin with, how Zeb ended up where he is, and what Zeb sees in Alex's eyes beyond just fear or desperation. We'll see why he froze, and get a glimpse into our General's (yes, you read that right) past.
> 
> Also: super important! Okorre is Lasana for Captain. Lasana is an incredible beautiful language and the creation of Anath_Tsurugi who I asked for permission to use in this fic. Definitely go check out their content if you love the language.
> 
> Also, it looks like the plan is to update on Tuesdays from now on, so keep your eyes peeled for the next bit on Tuesday a little over a week from today! :)


	4. The Jedi Padawan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revealing how the origins of this Empire's figurehead, and the grueling history of a warrior shouldered with the burden of leading his people, Garazeb Orrelios aches during Clone Wars and the grief they bring his people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been done for over a month, but I ended up waiting until after Clone Wars and after Kalluzeb Appreciation Week to post it. My wonderful beta @shipsfrecklesandhorseface gave me some amazing feedback I was able to use to make this story much better, so many thanks for being such a blessing.
> 
> Here it is! We get to see how the galaxy gets to where it is and how Zeb could ever be an Imperial. A longer chapter to make up for the wait :)

Garazeb Orrelios did not expect to become a captain of the Lasan High Honor Guard. His new rank placed unimaginable burdens on his shoulders following the start of the Clone Wars. In truth, it was not how he’d foreseen his life unfolding.

Rumors followed the galaxy’s head-first leap into open warfare. Lasan was said to be a primitive outer rim planet, and home to a hostile alien race not keen on the Republic (or the war, for that matter.) According to the boldfaced lies, the economy of Lasan was pitiful, and their way of life was nothing but barbaric. However, such rumors were not true: after Lasan struggled with Zygerrian slavers for so long, the Zygerrian leadership and their Separatist supporters fed those stories to the Republic to prevent aid from being sent near the beginning of the Clone Wars.

And those few who  _ had  _ heard their cries made laughable attempts to investigate the crisis. When minimal effort yielded nothing more than those same rumors that already circled the planet of warriors, many so-called philanthropists turned their heads the other way very quickly.

The Separatists went so far as to even back up the Zygerrians by means of a blockade, sending aid to the slavers that struggled to get the mighty warriors under control. It would have been the end of Lasan as Orrelios had known it but, as the Clone Wars raged on, the conflict spread across the Outer Rim and the resulting blockade drew Republic attention. 

One night, out in the open plains while on guard, Captain Orrelios looked into the sky to try and see the stars. What he saw instead was half a dozen Republic Jedi Cruisers emerging from hyperspace. At first, he’d been overjoyed, and rushed to tell his fellow guardsmen about the arrival of the Jedi. However, most refused to believe it until the Zygerrians had withdrawn their forces and stood against the clone armies. 

When the gunships arrived, filled with soldiers clad in white armor and helmets, Orrelios could not have hoped for more. Among the reinforcements was a pair of Jedi, a Master and Apprentice, he’d discovered. The legendary Anakin Skywalker had been sent to their aid, his experience with both the Zygerrians and working with the militaries of indigenous populations making him uniquely suited to aid the Lasat people. 

At his side was a younger, male Jedi, an apprentice he did not recognize, but whom he respected. When Orrelios saw him step down from the gunship, the lasat’s ears tilted upwards. 

Master and Apprentice walked together and, though he could see there was a level of respect between the two, the bond seemed fresh and as if it were growing. 

“I am General Anakin Skywalker of the Grand Army of the Republic. We’ve been sent to aid you.” The Jedi Knight said, putting one fist against his hand and bowing his head. Skywalker’s apprentice followed his example, a small tuft of his too-long blond hair tumbling into his eyes.

The captain mimicked the gesture. “My name’s Captain Orrelios, of the Lasan High Honor Guard. Thank you for coming, Master Jedi. We were beginning to lose hope anyone would listen to us.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be here sooner. We’ll be working closely with you from now on.” General Skywalker turned to look down at his Apprentice. “This is my Padawan learner, Commander Kenyze.”

“It’s good to meet you, Commander Kenyze,” Captain Orrelios said.

The Jedi Padawan nodded, a tuft of blond hair falling into his eyes. “Likewise.” 

General Skywalker excused himself to go over and speak with one of the clones, leaving him with the younger Jedi, who clapped his hands and smiled at Captain Orrelios. “Where should we get started?” 

“Uh, we’ve got a makeshift Command Center over here. It’s nothing fancy, Commander.”

“It’s perfectly fine.” The Padawan laughed. “You can call me Leayn, by the way.” 

Orrelios forehead crinkled. “You sure?”

“Entirely. We’re going to be working closely together, and it’ll be easier for you to call me by my name.” Leayn shrugged.

Things like this were a two-way street, Captain Orrelios decided. “Okay, well, if you’re Leayn, then I’m Garzaeb.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Garazeb.” The Padawan reached out his hand at about stomach level.

Captain Orrelios took hold of his forearm and patted the Jedi on the back. “Good to meet you, too, Leayn.”

Over the course of the next month, the Guardsmen and the Padawan's bond grew stronger. The two of them fought well together. In battle, the Jedi Padawan continued to have his back, time and time again. Orrelios often returned the favor and they settled into a familiar rhythm. It took some time, but the Zygerrians and their allies were driven from Lasan and their people were liberated once more. After the Separatist’s control of the system had been overridden, and they’d retaken the capital Y’rigon, things had fallen into place quite nicely. 

The Republic gunships arrived, some for the tanks, and some for the soldiers, the ranks depleting slowly but surely. The Clones were returning to their command ships, leaving behind a bruised, but not broken Lasan. The streets had slowly come to life again, once those who’d been driven from their homes had returned. Orrelios could see his people alive again, living rather than surviving as they’d been forced to for so long. He walked along the homely roads and sighed. 

Some ways in front, just past the elderly Lasat woman sweeping in the street, a gaggle of kits tore through the open courtyard a few houses down. They shrieked, some stumbling, and one even fell. The newly promoted General Orrelios of the Lasan High Honor Guard’s eyes widened in alarm and he tore past the Lasats to check on the kit. No sooner was he within reaching distance than was she pushing herself up from the cobbled ground and running after her friends.

His eyes scanned the beautiful courtyard where he could see the maintenance workers attending to the fountain. The water seemed intent on spraying at least one of the two of them in the face at any given time. 

When Orrelios saw Leayn surrounded by children, he grinned at the sight of the laughing Jedi Padawan doing tricks for a group of children shrieking in joy. He would use an easy wave of his hand to send a ball flying across the courtyard, and the gaggle of kits would chase after it and fight over whose turn it was to give it back to the Jedi so they could chase after it again. It was simple, but kind, and it warmed the guardsman’s heart.

Leayn looked up to see his friend approaching and waved. The kits didn’t notice Orrelios’s arrival, and continued to chase after the now floating ball that dodged all their attempts to capture it. The pair of warriors stood together, enjoying the peacefulness of the city once more. 

“So, General, huh? Guess I don’t outrank you anymore,” Leayn teased. “Can’t say I didn’t see it coming. You deserve it.”

“Yeah, the Queen said something about the Sun smiling down on me, but I like to think it’s more about skill, if you get my meaning.”

Leayn looked up at him mischievously. “I might.” There was a flicker behind the Jedi’s eyes, something Orrelios would have sworn he’d seen more and more as the battles had drawn to a close, but the guardsman couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was,or, more likely, he was afraid to. “I’m headed back to Coruscant, the Jedi Council wants us to return back to the Temple. Something about the new Chancellor requesting our aid on a time-sensitive matter.”

“So, all chancellors like General Skywalker then? Not just dead ones?”

Leayn shrugged. “Chancellor Byck’s been in office for about a standard year. I think he’s just trying to get his footing. I know from what little Rex and the men have told me that Master Skywalker was always requested by the former Chancellor, but I think it’s just because he’s a capable warrior and powerful Jedi. He’s not much for politics. ”

Laughter escaped Garazeb before he thought about it. “Nah, warrior seems about right. Your Master would rather go up against a thousand battle droids than spend one minute talking about legislation.”

“You’re so right.” The two of them were laughing together and, though the children hadn’t realized, the ball was no longer being guided by the Jedi Padawan. He and General Orrelios were watching one another closely, smiles no longer splitting their faces as their expressions settled on an easier kind of happiness. 

“So, are you leaving soon?” General Orrelios asked, trying and failing to sound casual.

“No, not really.” Leayn said, smiled, and rolled his eyes. “All of the troops take a while to get back, there’s lots of command-y things for me to do before I head back up to the cruiser, too. Like, making sure a tank doesn’t go missing.”

Orrelios snorted. “Okay, well, if you have a free moment, then I’ll be with the Guard, helping people settle back into their homes.”

“Well, look at you! A man of the people. I knew you were all soft on the inside, Garazeb.” As he teased Orrelios, Leayn saw the lasat’s claws reach out to paw at him. The Padawan ducked under the grabbing motion Orrelios made. His more flexible nature made it easy to slip by the lasat’s burly arms. Leayn backed away, bouncing on his feet. Two dimples appeared when he smiled, just out of reach. “I’ll come and find you, then? Before I leave?”

“Yeah. I’d like that.” He said, and they stood just out of reach of one another, hesitating together. Orrelios pulled his best playful grin out of his back pocket and winked. “Now get out of here, your soldiers need you, Commander.”

The Padawan rolled his eyes and waved goodbye over his shoulder, walking down the cobbled stone street. “ _ Bye _ , Garazeb.”

“Bye, Leayn.” he said softly. 

The kits looked as disappointed as he was, rounding themselves up to stand in front of the lasat general as they watched the Padawan leave them behind. “Aww.” One of them whined. “Does the Jedi have to leave? We were having so much fun!” 

Orrelios shook his head. “I wish he didn’t, but I’m pretty sure he’s got to go home.”

“Aww,” came the chorus of little voices. “Will you play with us, General Orrelios?”

Orrelios grinned. “Why not? I can spare a few minutes.”

The lasat kits cheered, and darted in a million directions, tossing the ball across the courtyard. It was obviously a game of keep-away, and he was more than happy to humor them. Garazeb Orrelios may have stayed a little bit longer than the few minutes he’d originally promised, but he didn’t mind. The joy of the children was enough for him to forget any sadness he’d felt for the moment, and Leayn’s promise to see him again was less of a goodbye than his heart had ached at the thought of. 

\---

Hours passed and, from the Guard Tower he’d taken up as his vantage point with another two of his men, Orrelios could see the last of the tanks from the landing field being carried away by gunships. The sun was still high in the sky, it was nearly midday, and he smiled, watching with keen eyes as the two Jedi moved through the temporary camp their men had set up. When Orrelios saw Leayn walk up to General Skywalker, his body unconsciously relaxed as he watched Leayn being patted on the shoulder by his mentor.

Chances were, Skywalker was praising his Padawan, because Leayn perked up, and Skywalker laughed. It seemed despite the adjustments that still needed to be made here and there, they had really settled into their roles as student and teacher. Leayn told him they’d struggled with it for over a year before settling into a rhythm. There was something about a former padawan Skywalker had lost, a story that had something to do with a missing Jedi Cruiser and a trap the Republic mistakenly sprung, but the Jedi Knight had made the effort anyways, and Leayn was grateful.

Orrelios smiled, and watched them teasing one another as they walked out of the camp on the edge of the city and towards the rainforest some distance away. Their relationship, while a dynamic he thought he understood on some levels, was as much of a mystery to Orrelios as the Jedi themselves, tucking away their imperfections and staying level-headed. Perhaps, it was the reason why it bothered him so much when Skywalker stumbled. Leayn’s playful banter dissolved in favor of reaching for his Master, who shook his head and stepped forwards. 

Skywalker tripped. He clutched at his chest and braced himself against a tree on the edges of the Clones’ encampment outside the city. Leayn tried his best to catch him, but seemed baffled by Anakin furiously shaking his head every time his Padawan approached him. Orrelios’s smile disappeared, replaced by a horrified look on his face.

_ Something is wrong. _ Orrelios realized, and rose to his feet immediately. “Guardsman, contact Captain Rex. Something is wrong with General Skywalker.”

“Yes, sir!” One of the other lasats said. He remained silent for a moment, and Orrelios watched Leayn turn over his shoulder and shout, most likely for help. 

The General debated running down to try and help himself, but he was too far. He would never reach the Jedi in time, not if it was serious. “What’s taking so long?”

“General, Captain Rex is not responding.”

“Then try one of the other clones.”

“None of them are responding, General.”

General Orrelios’s heart raced. He could see the clones coming across the encampment, obviously in a hurry, but what Garazeb Orrelios saw next he could not have predicted. They stopped, some distance away, with more and more members of the 501st forming an arc around where General Skywalker was now rising to his feet with his Padawan’s aid. 

The clones had their weapons up, and two streaks of blue light signaled the ignition of the Jedi’s lightsabers. Then, the unthinkable happened right before Orrelios’s very eyes: the clones opened fire, washing the entire valley in blue light. 

He didn’t hear the two lasats by his side gasp in horror, or himself order the one who’d been fiddling with the comm to direct all guardsmen to where the Republic’s forces were. The only thing he heard was the explosion and Leayn’s scream. 

All of the other guardsmen were in the streets, hurrying towards the clones’s camp, but Orrelios ran towards where Leayn’s shout had come from.

Afterwards, they would tell him he’d come across Captain Rex and a few other Clones pulling Leayn away from the limp Anakin Skywalker who had been lying dead in the street. All he could remember was grabbing the Padawan and taking him from the Captain. Rex had been less than happy about it, but he and his brothers had given him cover fire when the other clones came for them or, more specifically, came for Leayn. 

They would tell him that the guards had subdued the mutinous clones with minimal trouble. They’d all very abruptly come out of a trance, one by one, and been startled as if they had just realized the lasats were no longer their allies, but their wardens. Lasan’s warriors did not permit a single one of them freedom from their shackles. The clones were disarmed and driven through the city into the dungeons, looking amongst themselves and whispering.

On their way there the citizens saw the prisoners being marched to their cells and had flocked to their sides, shouting horrible slurs and insulting the clones in their native tongue. None of the clones spoke the language, but it was more than apparent the citizens were unhappy with them. 

One word did, however, translate.  _ JEDI. Jedi. Jedi.  _ It was one half of their mantra.

Afterwards, although the guardsmen were bewildered when reporting this to General Orrelios, the clones cried out in horror when one of their prison keepers sneered in basic: “Traitorous Jedi-killers.”

It had only gotten worse when the clones were told General Skywalker was dead, but strangely enough none seemed able to accept that it was their fault. 

When Orrelios saw Leayn unconscious while tucked under white sheets in the palace’s medical facilities, he struggled to ward off his grief.

Though he didn’t claim to understand it completely, Rex attempted to explain why he was different from the other clones. Shortly before the death of former Chancellor Palpatine, a series of Clone Troopers went missing on Coruscant, one after the other, each resurfacing with severe neurological damage after several days, whether they had survived or not. 

Captain Rex attempted to intervene, but had gone missing as well, only to discover the culprits were none other than his own brothers. A former brother-in-arms, Tup, died as a result of a mysterious illness while on leave, and his closest friends had torn through the ranks of the 501st Legion trying to find the cause of it. They were caught, and rather than coming in quietly, they went down with a fight.

Rex spent several days in the medical wards on Coruscant while recovering from the damage that had been done to his brain’s tissue along with the few clones who survived the brutal surgical processes. It had greatly interfered with his compliance with the orders sent out across the ranks, and allowed him to defy the command to murder his General in cold blood along with a number of other now killed or injured Clones in the 501st.

After he had remained glued to Leayn’s bedside from the moment the medical droids had cleared him for visitors, and after he’d demanded to know everything about the situation when Captain Rex took his place so he could attend to his duties, he had learned what had happened. 

The clone Captain proved his innocence in the entire affair, and stayed by Leayn’s bedside every moment Orrelios could not, which was not often, considering he remained there for almost two entire days while the Padawan healed. 

Rex put a hand on his back while he was hunched over at the Jedi’s bedside and patted it twice, and gained Orrelios’s attention.

Rex moved to stand across the room by the window that looked out into the city, and sighed. “Look, I don’t know about you, and it doesn’t really matter what I say, but the Commander wouldn’t want you to just sit here while your people need you.”

“There are other lasats who can take care of things while I stay here.”

“I know you don’t want anything to happen to him but, sometimes, things are out of our control, Soldier.” The Captain braced himself over the windowsill and dug his fingers into the stone. “The Commander knows you love your people and he’d want you to be with them. He’s a Jedi and he won’t go down without a fight. I won’t let him. You have to be where you’re needed and right now, that isn’t here.”

“I can’t just leave him.” 

“You know he won’t be alone. I will always stand by my General, and my Commander. No matter what, I won’t betray either of them.” 

“I know. You’re not like the others. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t trustworthy.”

“I appreciate you looking out for him, but duty comes before grief. He’s not dead; he’s fighting. Go fight for him so that, when he wakes up, the galaxy is better for him. Even if it’s only a little bit.”

The old clone was right. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what the Captain was saying already, but hearing it sparked a fire. The fuel for his determination rose to meet the decision Orrelios knew was best and, after a moment, he rose from his chair. “You look after him.”

“I will.”

“I mean it, Captain.”

“Yes, General.”

It wasn’t a slip up either. When Rex turned to look Orrelios in the eye and nod his head, the lasat could see he meant it. He was  _ the General _ now. When he left the hospital wing to freshen up before heading for the Command Center, General Orrelios prepared himself to walk into that room full of expectant gazes and to find some way to deal with what had happened to the Jedi as the military leader his people deserved. 

Rex’s unwavering loyalty allowed General Orrelios to be briefed on the entire situation. He learned that theJedi Cruiser Resolute II was hailing the planet, and had been every standard hour for the entirety of those two days. 

“Should we respond?” One of the guardsmen asked as they stood in the war room of the palace. 

Orrelios weighed his options and sighed. On the one hand, it could very well be another attempt on the Jedi’s life, a ploy to convince the Lasats to let their guard down and welcome enemies with open arms into their homes. On the other, what choice did they have? If they did not respond, surely what meager air defenses they had would not be able to protect them entirely from the fury of the Republic Navy, not to mention the Republic battle cruisers would not simply let them be what with several hundred clones taken prisoner under the city, and both the Jedi unaccounted for.

He scowled, and stood in front of the holoprojector. “Make contact with the officer in charge of the Jedi Cruiser hailing us. I want to know what they want.”

The lasats complied, and replied in the affirmative. With a few strokes on the keyboard, they replied to the signal of the Star Destroyer, and Orrelios braced himself. In the middle of the room came the shuddering blue silhouette of a human man. He seemed older than any of the clones or the Jedi. He crossed his arms and scowled at General Orrelios. “Well, finally. You have been ignoring our attempts to contact you for days, now. Is this how you treat your allies?”

“Only ones that are as dishonorable as you.” The General snarled.

“I  _ beg _ your pardon.” The human said, his entire expression contorting into one of shock and anger. “Who do you think you are, speaking to me like that?

“I am General Orrelios of the Lasan High Honor Guard.” The lasat’s authority oozed from him without effort, as if he were born to exude the power he wielded. “I protect my allies, and you are not my ally. Not anymore.”

“I am Admiral Yularen of the Republic Navy. My men and I fought with you and for your people. I don’t know what game you think you’re playing but I demand to be put into contact with General Skywalker at once. We’ll see what he has to say about this.”

His eyes narrowed and ears flattened, teeth baring in a dark snarl. “I guess I’m the one who has to tell you that it isn’t happening, Admiral.”

“Why in the blazes not?”

“Oh don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s pitiful, and dishonesty has gotten you nothing but our contempt.” The General crossed his arms and might have rolled his eyes if he was not so determined to stare down the Admiral who had suddenly become the one to blame for all of his problems, whether it was rational or not. “Your men killed him.”

Admiral Yularen made a strangled noise and glared back at the Lasat General. “This is outrageous! How  _ dare _ you make such an accusation.”

“Don’t play games with me, Admiral. Your Republic showed its true colors and I will show mine.” Orrelios snarled. “Leave our system and never return, or face the consequences of your actions.”

“And I am just supposed to take you at your word? That you have the ability to strike our ships from orbit, or that General Skywalker was killed by his own men?”

“If you’d prefer that we give you a demonstration to drive you from Lasat space, we will.”

“What about all those men still on the surface? What about General Skywalker?”

“What about them? They broke our laws, violated our most sacred principles. They are murderers and traitors, and will be dealt with as such.”

“They are my responsibility!” 

“They are my prisoners, Admiral.”

“General, be reasonable! This is an act of war!”

“An act of war is betraying the confidence of your ally. Murdering your leaders in cold blood on our planet qualifies as much.”

“I will not leave here without my men!”

“Then you will not leave here at all.”

“What about Commander Kenyze? Surely he must have some say in all this? Or is he  _ conveniently  _ dead, too?”

“There is nothing convenient or humorous about the death of the Jedi, Admiral. Not unless you’re happy hearing about the news of your men’s betrayal.”

“You dare speak to me that way?”

“Oh, I dare.” The Lasat General turned and moved away from the holoprojector with a wave of his hand. “Goodbye, Admiral.” 

“Now, you just wait one minute! I’ll have you know that-”

The transmission ended and the room was silent when the Admiral's face vanished from it. Darkness fell and, although the lights were turned back on after the communique had ended, the weight only grew heavier on General Orrelios’s back when he turned to look at the guardsmen working in the Command Center.

“Keep me updated on any changes in the situation. I don’t believe for a second the Admiral will give in to our demands.” He turned around and returned to the medical ward without another word. 

When Orrelios saw Leayn had not woken, any semblance of control he’d felt as General fled. Rex greeted him with a nod but, otherwise, nothing changed in the room. 

Much to his disappointment, General Orrelios had been right; Yularen would not give up that easily. The Admiral hailed them again, and again, but the Lasat General flat out refused to listen to anything the Admiral had to say. When the Admiral refused to leave the system and threatened to force the Lasats to speak with him, the Queen summoned Captain Rex to question him on Admiral Yularen’s most likely course of action. Rex answered honestly: “Perseverance.”

Orrelios snarled at the interruption when the clone and the guardsmen returned with orders to contact the Admiral once more, but the guards insisted the Queen asked him to speak with Yularen, and Rex promised to watch over the Padawan while General Orrelios attended to his duties. He was not one to defy a direct order, and so, Orrelios had returned to the war room and given the order to hail the Republic cruiser. 

The Admiral responded promptly. “I see you’ve decided to come to your senses.”

“I’ve decided to let you see for yourself what I keep trying to tell you.” General Orrelios corrected. 

“Which is?”

“The truth.”

Although it had taken some push and pull on both their ends, Admiral Yularen ended up taking a single shuttle down from the Resolute II. Upon arriving on the planet’s surface, the Admiral was escorted by no less than six guardsmen to the palace. It was there the Admiral was greeted by the Queen of Lasan and General Orrelios, who stood outside the doors to the temple within the palace walls, with solemn expressions.

Although he had not been fond of the Admiral, Orrelios was not cruel, and tried to offer the only olive branch he could muster. “Admiral, are you sure you’re ready to see this?” 

“Of course I am! Who do you think I am? Some sort of soft-willed civilian?”

“A mortal man who is suffering.” The Queen said. “My General only asks so that you might be prepared.”

“I am.”

“Then we will proceed.” The Queen nodded at the guards at either door; they moved aside and reached for the handles. “We only ask that you be silent when we enter. This is a place of worship, and we would hope you might respect at least that much of our culture.”

“Yes yes, now let’s get on with it.” 

General Orrelios suspected that afterwards, Wullf Yularen regretted his disregard for their warnings for many years to come. As soon as the massive wooden doors had opened, the vast number of guardsmen and citizens bowing in prayer looked up, watching the Queen and General escort the human over to the open box on the shrine in the middle of the room.

Yellow, orange and white layered flowers bloomed between the many woven branches that made up the box, and small twigs were woven together by the vines of these flourishing flowers that seemed to cover every inch of the room. They hung from the ceilings from which sunlight poured in and bathed the entire stone temple, and curved across the crafted rock floors beneath them. Yularen did his best not to trip on them, noting the two lasats stepping over the vines and the blossoming flowers. It was difficult to carry himself with as much grace as the Lasats, but he saw no harm in not stepping on their sacred flora.

The further they moved across the room towards the center, the more eyes fell on the Admiral. It made him wish Skywalker would just jump out and scare him already, that the clones would all laugh that he'd bought into such a load of uncredible bantha shit. He braced himself for years of mockery and jokes and, because of it, Yularen was not prepared for the sight in the casket.

The flowers had whispered their songs across the entire chamber and seemed to be everywhere but the center of the room. Most vines stopped short of the single round circle overcast by shadow with the painting of a man with red streaks across his body and face, curled in the center of the sun painted beneath their feet. A few brave ends of the vines snuck their way past some writing cut into the floor below, a surrounding ring of the Lasat language cut from the outside of the painting of the sun.

A portion of the ceiling had been moved away, intentionally, it seemed. The flowers curled down from the gap where sunlight led down to the shrine. They grew from the ceiling and the open window but, more importantly, where the sun touched the shrine, they wrapped themselves gently, as if in a loving embrace, around the scorched robes of a Jedi Knight. Some curled around the ankles of dark boots while others moved back and forth as they weaved up the legs of the taller man.

His long hair was out of his eyes and, though his face had clearly been burned, flowers had moved to bloom over the misshapen part of his features, leaving just the closed eyes and peaceful expression of Anakin Skywalker’s face. 

The Admiral gasped. He stumbled backwards and breathed unevenly, eyes wide in horror. 

“The flowers are a funeral rite on Lasan.” One of the priestesses explained. They were permitted to speak in that place. “They symbolise the love of  _ Ashnahn _ and grow rapidly in the sunlight. They also preserve the body and naturally shape themselves to wrap fallen warriors in the loving embrace of  _ Ashnahn _ .”

General Orrelios suspected the words fell on deaf ears because the Admiral clutched at his chest and stared at the open casket with his mouth hanging open in horror. “It  _ can’t _ be.”

“I am so sorry for your loss.” Lasan’s Queen whispered. “Lasan will forever be in the debt of this great warrior. We will honor him as is our custom for our fallen allies. They are equal in death to our own warriors.”

The Admiral took nearly the entire day to recover. He informed the fleet of the death of Anakin Skywalker, and then sat down with the Queen and explained that the murder of the Jedi had happened across the galaxy, not just on Lasan. The Clone Armies obliterated their Generals and Commanders in cold blood, but it caused him to investigate rumors that had been circulating around about chips being implanted in the clones’ heads which had caused this behavior in the past. 

He’d bargained for the clones’ release contingent upon two very non-negotiable conditions.

The first condition was Lasan holding a proper funeral and burial for the fallen Jedi. Admiral Yularen agreed immediately. The Queen nodded her approval. 

The second condition was the Republic’s forces never returning to Lasan, and a petition for a formal apology on behalf of the Republic Senate for the horrors committed on their homeworld and in their streets. Yularen promised he would do his very best and agreed to put as much in writing. 

“What of Captain Rex? Do we know of his fate? He and the General were quite close.” The Admiral asked. 

“He defended the Jedi, and stood against the other clones. We did our very best to try and honor him and his actions.” General Orrelios said as vaguely as he dared. “He proved himself to be a courageous and honorable warrior.”

“I see.” Admiral Yularen frowned as the sun shone in his eyes for a brief moment. He lifted his hand to block the blinding light. “I suppose it’s for the best. He never did return to normal after Commander Tano left. General Skywalker moved on better than Captain Rex did, much to my surprise. I suppose one can only suffer so much loss and remain whole.”

General Orrelios nodded. “Of course.” He was grateful the Admiral did not ask questions. 

The Republic forces left Lasan, as promised. As soon as they had, Orrelios made his way back to the palace medical ward.

When Orrelios saw Leayn had not so much as twitched, chest rising and falling at the same pace, he choked back a sob. Rex shook his head, and patted the lasat’s back as the clone walked out to use the fresher since Orrelios had returned. 

He sighed. If the Padawan did not wake soon, the chance that he would fail to wake at all only grew. Some dark, sinister thought rose inside of him.  _ He will die anyways, it only makes sense to put him out of his misery before you lose the strength to do so. _

Orrelios’s heart raced; the unbidden dark musing had risen from a part of him he’d never sought out. Not even in battle had his heart grown so cold.  _ No. He’ll wake up. I just have to give him the chance to, and he’ll live. _

It was difficult not to lose hope, though. Seeing Leayn struggle to fight for his life was devastating. His physical wounds healed, but Orrelios feared the Padawan’s mind would refuse to let Leayn keep his promise to the Lasat General. Closing his eyes and resting his head on his arms, where the Padawan’s hand rested, Orrelios sighed and prepared himself for another night of restlessness. 

Fingertips brushed through the velvet-fine fur, and they were not his own Orrelios realized. His green eyes snapped open and he looked up to see teary-eyed dark brown eyes looking down at him from the top of the bed. “Leayn,” Orrelios breathed. The Padawan laughed, his dry, hoarse voice a welcome sound.

Orrelios didn’t think, he only acted, and leapt out of his seat, leaning towards the Padawan until he was close enough the velvet-softness that had been under Leayn’s fingers snuck across the Jedi’s chin and neck. Orrelios’s claws sank into the fresh robes the human had been changed into when he’d been admitted by their doctors, tearing the fabric. 

Leayn didn’t mind; he returned the favor, fingernails snaking their way into the wrinkled guardsman’s uniform. Leayn heaved a sigh of relief and buried his face in the lasat’s neck, more than happy to lose himself in that warrior’s embrace.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Leayn croaked. 

Orrelios didn’t need to ask who the Padawan was referring to.

“Yeah. He is, Lee. I’m so sorry.”

That night, once Leayn was able to stand, Orrelios snuck him out of the medical wing and to the shrine where his master was lying in peace. The flowers didn’t seem as wonderful in the dark of the night but the light from the three moons was enough for him to see his master’s face despite the shadows of twisted vines hanging over their heads and snaking below their feet.

Leayn cried silent tears on the shoulder of the guardsman’s uniform. His otherwise silent grief was invisible to those who didn’t know to look for it.

When Orrelios saw Leayn fighting back tears as they followed the trail the casket took through the city, he felt his grief multiply itself by a hundred. The sun crept across the sky with thousands of Lasats on the streets, but all Orrelios could see was the glimmer of liquid agony in Leayn’s eyes. Warriors had come from every far corner of the planet to attend. Rex marched with them, his own pain hidden better than the Padawan’s. Orrelios suspected wearing a helmet helped with that. The funeral procession arrived at the large temple in the center of the city, the Sun and Light Temple.

It was carved from enormous white stone and rivaled the palace in size, and its beauty was undeniable. The flowers did not grow over every surface but hung from the hundred foot high ceilings, some brushing against the heads of taller Lasats. The people were allowed one by one to pay their respects. Many soldiers and guardsmen were among those who paid respects, and it took nearly the whole summer’s day for the hundreds of warriors to finish their farewells. The condolences given to Leayn lasted even longer but, the longer the well-meaning words went on, the more the neutral face the Padawan wore slipped.

The Lasat General was about to step in and stop the steady flow of the same apologies and the mountain of grief from growing behind Leayn’s eyes when the Queen stood, silencing everyone. The time had come for silence. The Jedi looked relieved, but Orrelios knew what came next, and weaved his fingers through the human’s own. The sun had fallen, and while usually the window was harmless, the curved lens on the other side directed the setting sun’s light through the glass. It started with the dried twigs and twisting flower vines smoking, before engulfing in flames. 

The funeral pyre remained lit for what felt like forever, and Leayn trembled as he leaned closer to Orrelios, wrinkling the Lasat’s new crisp ceremonial uniform, but the Lasat didn’t mind.

“It’ll be over soon. I promise.” He squeezed Leayn’s hand, and was relieved when the Padawan squeezed in return. 

Once the fire went out, the sun had disappeared with it. The Queen said a few words at the end about how the will of  _ Ashnahn _ had brought Skywalker to them, and how the great Jedi General would forever be remembered and cherished by the Lasat people, but neither of them internalized anything she was saying. Orrelios snuck Leayn out the back door. They made it only a few steps outside when Leayn stumbled, but the Lasat was ready to catch him. Leayn kept crying, clinging to Orrelios and shaking his head. “I don’t think I can do this without him. I can’t.”

They stayed like that for some time, holding one another in the shadows of the Sun and Light Temple as Leayn struggled with the darkness that had taken hold inside him.

\----

Rallied by the furious Lasat Queen as the Clone Wars raged on across the galaxy, taking more lives and crushing many races under its insufferable boot following the slaughter of the Jedi, Lasan, Kashyyk, even Trondosha, came together in the face of xenophobia, discirmination and blatant disregard for non-humans to form a unified Consortium for Equality. It was exhilarating. 

The systems and thousands of others stood in the faces of the Separatists and the Republic, united in demanding all of their people be given the respect they deserved. War was no excuse to disregard all basic rights of a living being. The Separatists sneered, and dismissed the newly founded Consortium, but the Republic promised their equality if they pledged their arms to the ancient government. 

The Consortium agreed, and the combined forces drove the Separatist armies all the way to the capital of Raxus. The battle was won and it seemed as if things were finally looking up.

No one knew exactly how it had happened. No one but Orrelios.

One moment, everything was fine. When Orrelios saw Leayn through the haze of smoke and fire, the Jedi Knight was smiling at him, dimples appearing through even the smear of dust on his cheeks and under the soft blond beard he’d grown into over the past few years. General Orrelios had grinned from ear to ear when the then Jedi Knight and General Leayn Kenyze of the Republic ran to him from across the battlefield after all the fighting had ended.

They’d run through the mix of clones and lasats to meet in the middle of the street. It had taken some adjustments on both their parts, but the two warriors had learned how they’d fit together in the years since those first awkward hugs and embarrassed laughter. 

“Karabast, Lee, I’m so proud of you.” Orrelios said, sneaking in a brush of their necks.  _ Lasat kisses.  _ He’d explained several years before when they’d last both been on Lasan. 

It had somehow been both so long since they’d first met, and yet not long enough. The time would never be enough. 

Leayn laughed. “I just can’t believe it. We did it. We beat them, we beat the Separatists.”

“Oh, yeah? Well believe it, because we did!” Orrelios held his arms out and beamed. “We took Raxus!”

“I didn’t ever think this would happen.” Leayn admitted.  _ Not after what happened to us. _

“It did, and now you can come home. You can come home to Lasan with me.”

“Like we planned.” Leayn grinned widely. “I can’t believe it. It’s actually happening,” 

“When you and I get back to Lasan, there’s something I want to ask you.” 

“What is it?” 

“General Kenyze!” Came the harsh voice of an angry clone commander.

Orrelios groaned. “As hot as it is having a Jedi General all to myself, I’d really prefer it if I actually had you all to myself.”

“Sorry, I just... he means well.”

“He does  _ not _ and you know it.” Orrelios rolled his eyes. “I don’t like him.”

“I know you don’t.”

“He’s always such a kriffing pain.”

“No, not always,” Leayn shook his head, but his face split into a massive grin. “Sometimes he’s sleeping.” 

“I just don’t know why you couldn’t talk Rex into staying on through the end of the war.”

“Rex needed to find his own path. I had no business forcing him into fighting in this war for three more years. Besides, these men tried to kill him.”

“They tried to kill you, too,”

“Yeah, well, they were his brothers and he had to shoot some of them, Zeb.” Leayn frowned. “It’s not the same and it would have been selfish to keep him where he had no place being.”

“You’re too noble for your own good.”

“I try.”

“General Kenyze!” Commander Xander shouted.

“Ugh, you better go see what he wants.”

“You’d better remember to ask me whatever thing you wanted to ask me.” Leayn said. 

“I will, I promise. Now go be a hero, General.”

“You’ve got it, General.”

Leayn moved across the battlefield to speak with Commander Xander, and Orrelios shook his head. He couldn’t wait to be rid of the Republic and their clones and, although Leayn would miss them, Orrelios was certain he’d come to love a peaceful life on Lasan. A peaceful life with him.

When General Orrelios returned to the side of camp the Lasat warriors had taken up as their own, he laughed with his brothers in arms. They patted him on the back, and General Orrelios laughed at their jokes about finally getting to go home and how they’d done it; they were the equals of every human or humanoid species, and the Consortium would surely be proud. 

“Oh, well, don’t you look happy as a kit during the Harvest Light Festival, Orrelios!” Tazalye said.

The Lasat General snorted. “Why would you say that?”

“Oh, come on,” Tazalye laughed, brandishing his bo-rifle and puffing out his chest. “I’m General Garazeb Orrelios! I fight for my people and the good of thousands of systems of the Consortium of Equality, and I am so relieved this kriffing war is over because I’ve just been so sad when my human boyfriend has to deal with all his Jedi responsibilities and he’s leaving the Republic and the army to come live with me on my home world and oh, how smitten am I?”

“Shut up,” Orrelios rolled his eyes, but he smiled fondly at his best friend’s antics. “If you weren’t my friend, you’d be court martialed.”

“Good! Then maybe I’d actually get to see you every once in a while when we aren’t in battle, General!” Taz teased. “Honestly, if you spent any more time with General Kenyze, you’d probably forget you were a Lasat General.” 

“Aw, leave him out of this.”

“Oh, excuse me! Everyone, remember: leave the General’s boyfriend out of this,”

“He’s not just my boyfriend,”

Tazalye’s eyes bulged. “Karabast, really? You’ve taken the rites with him?”

“No, no. Nothing like that, not yet. I just… He’s giving up everything to come live with me, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be  _ willing _ to do a proper courtship or something. I’d be happy, him and I just living our best lives, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t going to talk to him about it.”

“You? Proper courtship?” Tazalye shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You’ve never really bought into all that stuff the priestesses spout anyways. You’re really serious about him, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah I really am.” It could’ve been his imagination, but Tazalye looked disappointed. Orrelios never got the chance to ask why because one of his men rushed through the warrior’s camp and shouted for his attention.

“General Orrelios, General Orrelios!”

“What, what is it?”

“The clones, they’re attacking!”

To say that Orrelios was horrified was an understatement. He hadn’t even considered the possibility. Of course the Republic would attack, it only made sense. They would never be a human’s equal, and they’d been foolish to believe the Republic’s cowardly Chancellor would keep his word. But Leayn?

Orrelios seized his bo-rifle off of his back, lighting the ends of the unfolded staff with a snarl. “Inform the Captains. Have all units report to their commanding officers and create a perimeter around the camp. Defend each other at all costs!”

“Where are you going?” Tazalye asked.

“To put an end to this!” Orrelios shouted. The Lasat General burst through the city’s streets, past fallen clones and a few Lasat warriors that made his heart pang with guilt. They’d trusted the Republic because of him, and they had died because of it. 

Orrelios’s momentum allowed him to plow through the few clones he ran into, going where he desperately hoped to find Leayn. Orrelios looked up and gasped. On the bridge between the two buildings just ahead of the Lasat, Leayn stood, saber ignited, with Commander Xavier holding his blasters out. 

General Orrelios watched the clone Commander scowl, and tilt his head to where the Lasat was standing in the street. When Leayn saw Zeb, heturned his head and shouted, with one hand outstretched, as if he would be able to reach the Lasat, expression caught between relief and horror. The look in his eyes said everything: Leayn didn’t know the clones were going to attack.

In that one moment, the moment the Jedi Knight was distracted, the clone commander fired, but so did Zeb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lasana - Anath Tsurugi was kind enough to let me use this beautiful creation of hers!  
> Ashnahn is the Lasana word for "Sun".  
> My day 6, confession fic for Kalluzeb Appreciation week, "Crack in the Wall" uses the room described with Anakin's coffin in it as a cultural staple. I love this concept and it's a part of the culture I'm excited to develop more :)  
> Lee's name is pronounced: "Lee-In" not "Lee-Anne" but whatever floats your boat! He's been Anakin's Padawan for a few years after Ahsoka's mysterious misadventure I subtly weaved in there.  
> Order 66 in this chapter written before I watched Shattered. It was a concept I planned on including for months, and I added it here at the suggestion of my awesome Beta who helped me work out this explanation of how the Galaxy came to be the way it is.  
> Zeb has a type okay? This poor boy didn't stand a chance when he saw a similarly aged warrior (Leayn is seventeen when he's introduced, and Zeb is nineteen in the timeline I have written out for the fic.) Coruscanti Jedi blond boy heading his way, and it blossomed on its own into an originally platonic relationship since Lee's a Jedi, but after the fall of the Order, the one good thing that came out of it was he could be with Zeb without worrying about the Council or the Order, and Zeb just loves him to death. (oh man poor choice of words there but I'm going with it.)  
> I hope you enjoyed!! There is more coming!


	5. The Slip Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While General Orrelios struggles with the striking similarities between Leayn and Alex, their world crumbles down around their ears, and the Spectres watch as one of their own slips from their fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to @shipsfrecklesandhorseface for helping me out with this chapter! You rule :)

Following their unprovoked attack of the Lasat forces that had fought alongside them, the battle of Raxus ended in the slaughter of 501st. The Consortium raged at the betrayal of the Republic. Every system shouted in one voice. If the Republic would not give them equality, they would take it. The Consortium declared war, and the weary Republic propped up the battered clone armies to defend itself once more.

However, it seemed without the Jedi, the Republic was doomed to fall. And fall it did. The few survivors of the devastating Order 66 disappeared after the news of some of the last of the Jedi’s deaths spread like wildfire throughout the galaxy. Soon after, the Clone Armies abandoned the Republic and retreated to Kamino, forcibly taking over the water world and digging in for a struggle that took place over the course of nearly a full standard year, but ended with all supply lines being cut to starve the clones into surrender. 

They chose death instead, and Kamino fell, becoming a lifeless husk where the shattered remains of a once grand army were laid to rest. 

Hundreds of planets rejoiced. For the first time in his people’s history, and for many other people, they were not lesser beings, not beasts or slaver’s stock. They were simply living beings, just as humans were.

People. His people had accomplished this; they’d led the way and changed history in an all-encompassing social revolution. General Orrelios had been a part of changing the entire galaxy. With the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic wiped from the face of existence, the Queen of Lasan, hand-in-hand with their allies, proposed a unified galaxy under the shared rule of the mightiest warriors among the stars.

The Imperial Consortium was the foundation of a more equal galaxy. It brought those whose voices had been silenced as minorities to the tables as equals, and disassembled the corrupt Republic’s remnants. The Consortium made plans to curate a galaxy for all species, a galaxy most definitely not for humans. 

Those who resisted were imprisoned, and those who defied the Consortium were executed, while the rest were stripped of their weapons and defenses, so it came as a surprise when the spared city-planet was able to push back.

Coruscant rebelled.

They threatened hard-won peace within days of the Imperial victory at Kamino, as well as the equality Lasan and its allies had fought for. The Consortium’s warriors had bled and died for a better galaxy, and Coruscant was not allowed to destroy it. Lasan’s Queen warned the battered population. “Coruscant will join our image of the galaxy. The only choice in the matter is whether or not the planet will wear a veil of red in the union, or one of white.”

Coruscant chose red, and the Consortium obliged.

It took time, and Coruscant was soon bathed in red, but the humans who led the planet-wide rebellion were dealt with, and Coruscant joined the Imperial Consortium as a burnt-out husk, devoid of life, and no longer a danger. The Clone Wars came to a final end.

The Republic had taken everything from him, leaving his planet to suffer at the hands of slavers while they fought their petty war. The Republic then brought their war to his home, killing many Lasat warriors. Their disgusting treason and selfishness only went further when the clones turned on their General, and on Raxus… Orrelios shuddered. It would suffice to say the Republic deserved its fate. But that was then.

_ This was now. _

* * *

General Orrelios stared at the intruder in disbelief. Time froze, and so did Orrelios, staring into the eyes of that single human from the Rebellion standing across from him at the bottom of the Imperial Security Terminal. 

As Captain, and then as General Orrelios, he had been a part of the most pivotal moment in Lasat history, and in the history of the galaxy, but Orrelios, for some reason, hesitated when he saw this man, this faint echo of a once brilliant and incredible man, step in front of him with a dead man’s switch and all the outward humanity of a rabid animal.

And yet, even after such a great amount of time had passed since Coruscant had been defeated and the Republic had been left behind as a distant nightmare, the pain was fresh. All Orrelios could do was look into his eyes, brown eyes that brought him over a decade away from where he was standing, and more agony than that human could imagine.

In the Rebel’s eyes he could see the eyes of the Jedi Knight on Raxus, a Jedi who hadn’t known, suddenly burdened with the reality of a galaxy worse off for the truth.  _ Lee. _

But Leayn was not standing in front of him; this human brandished a flurry of weapons at his disposal capable of hurting Orrelios without the human ever knowing it.

Leayn had been killed before his very eyes because he’d been coaxed by the kriffing Republic to fight their stupid war. 

His training kicked in; Orrelios reached for his bo-rifle, only to stop at the sight of the human rebel scowling at him. “I wouldn’t. You can try it if you’d like, but it won’t do you any good.” The rebel spoke with an emptiness in his voice only furthering the pit in Orrelios’ stomach. 

“You don’t want to do this, human.” Orrelios said as evenly as he could. He did his best to not look down at his terrified niece, knowing he would watch his resolve crumble as soon as he did. “It won’t change anything but the number of gravestones needed to be carved.”

The man laughed, and where there should have been joy was replaced by a weighted bitterness. “And you think that isn’t the idea? Lucky for the gravestone carver, he won’t be too busy; not if I die in here. No one would bother to visit my grave, much less make one.” 

The Lasat wished he could have pulled the kit towards him, as if it would shelter her somehow. He knew deep down it wouldn’t. “Don’t go digging your own grave then. You can take control of your life. You can change your fate here and now. Choose to do that, to do something more than cause bloodshed.”

“You think I have a choice?” Alex laughed, and coughed. “What part of me looks like this is what I want? And who are you to lecture me on causing bloodshed, Orrelios?”

At a standstill, the enemies stared one another down, Alex and Orrelios glaring as they both searched one another’s eyes.

“Uncle Okorre, what’s happening?” The Lasat kit began to tear up, droplets welling in her eyes. “I don’t want to stay here anymore!” The little Lasat looked up at Alex with big green eyes, ears pressing themselves downwards. She turned her head to look at her Uncle Okorre, reaching out for the Lasat with one of her hands, but was startled when Orrelios shook his head and held up his hands not to take hers, but to stop her. 

“No, don’t move, little kit! Just- stay there!” He pleaded. “You have to wait there for now,”

“But I don’t like the Mandalorian’s friend anymore! I want to leave!” She cried. Guilt wrapped its fingers into Alex’s insides, his potent stare slipping away some.

“Please, just stay there. Only for now. It’ll all be over soon,” Orrelios said, glaring at Alex with a new wash of fury in his blood. “Are you so heartless you’d endanger a kit for your own twisted personal gain?”

“I’m not. She’s perfectly safe. I won’t hurt her,” Alex said, but General Orrelios shook his head. No matter what, Orrelios was going to assume the worst of him, and nothing Alex did was going to change that. “I’m committed to this, clearly. How is your decision to accuse me of being a heartless monster changing anything about this?”

His ears fell. “You’re from Coruscant,” The Lasat General’s eyes widened in horror, recognizing the faint echo of an otherwise long-forgotten accent of a lost Core world.

“No one is from Coruscant. Not anymore.” Alex knew his hold on the situation was shaky at best, and he knew if he did not get it under control, he would find himself in a number of bad situations. 

“Now,” He turned to nod towards the Lasat’s weapon. “How about you slide that bo-rifle across the floor over to me?”

“No,” Orrelios snarled.

“I’d say you don’t have much of a choice,” Alex barked. “Now slide it over.”

Orrelios growled, lips pulling back to bare his teeth, but he lowered himself to the ground with the ancient weapon in hand and placed it where the Rebel asked.

“NO!” Sabine shouted. The cry of horror echoed through the whole room, and a searing blaze of a blaster bolt struck the Lasat just as his bo-rifle lit up in his grasp. Orrelios hit the ground and the little Lasat screamed for her uncle. 

_ Oh no. _ That was not at all how he’d seen the situation unfolding; of course Sabine would have realized it before Alex had. General Orrelios never had any intention of complying with Alex’s demands. The kit pushed Alex away, but it wasn't as if he were going to stop her. Alex lost his footing and tumbled to the floor. Both hands flew out to catch himself and he dropped the detonator.

He dropped the detonator.

It rolled across the floor, unmanned and alone. He stared at it with two eyes, holding his breath. His breath. He was still breathing; he was still alive. Orrelios struggled to get up from where he’d hit the floor, but Alex was faster and lunged for the bo-rifle, staff crackling to life in his hands. 

The weight was an odd mix of familiarity and foreign since it wasn’t really  _ his _ bo-rifle, but Alex could still use it. He pulled the little Lasat back; she wasn’t safe if Sabine decided to start shooting again. Alex trusted Sabine’s aim, but in that instance, he trusted his own judgement more. 

“No!” The kit screamed. “No! Why would you do that to him?” She looked up at him, tears falling freely down her face and wailed. “How could you hurt my uncle?”

Alex never had the chance to answer her. The building shuddered with a distant echoing  _ boom.  _ He could tell immediately what it was, and it didn’t take the second, the third, or any of the others after the first sound to realize what was happening. 

Bombs. The bombs were going off, because of course there was a delay. Alex shouted into the open chamber: “Kanan, run!” 

“Alex!” Sabine shouted. He looked up to see her being pulled away by both Ezra and Kanan, but he shook his head when she stood helplessly so far from her mission partner as if to say: _ There’s nothing you can do. _

He grasped the kit’s hand and moved to flee as far as he could from the bomb underneath them when Alex saw Orrelios groan, unable to push himself off the floor. As always, Sabine had shot true, but never had Alex wished otherwise until that moment. Every fiber of his being screamed to leave this Lasat, after all, no Imperial would think twice about rescuing him, the Rebel. 

And yet, the whisper of a voice he’d never heard, breathed in his ear:  _ Stay. Save him. _

For whatever reason, Alex didn’t know why, nor would he ever, he listened to it. Oh, he would ask himself for months, if not years to come why he stopped to listen to that still small voice, why he went against every possible instinct he possessed to do such a stupid, selfless thing. Alex suspected he would never know the answer, and could only guess for the rest of his life, however long it may have been. He would learn, however, the why would never matter as much as the what. 

What happened next changed Alex’s life forever. He stopped and dove onto his hands and knees at the Lasat’s side before he realized it. 

Pain and disorientation felled the great Lasat warrior, but they could not keep him down. Together, Alex and Orrelios stood, and hurried away from the droid chamber, past the activating droids that were too late to stir from their slumber, and pieces of walkways tumbling down from above. Stone and metal fell past them, some narrowly missing the odd trio, but the three of them kept moving as the building shook, rocked by each series of bombs. 

Alex looked up for a sliver of a moment to search the walkways for his friends, but they were empty. He didn’t know whether to be more worried or relieved, but Kanan was smart, and the other two Spectres had sharp minds and reflexes; they’d find a way out. As soon as they entered the ring of hallways surrounding the droid chamber, Alex had to focus on the task at hand: finding a way out for himself and his companions and reaching that way out in one piece. “Come on, Orrelios,” He hissed. “You Lasats are of tougher stock than this.” 

When the Lasat didn’t acknowledge Alex and continued to stumble uncoordinatedly, Alex shook his head and shouted. “You are a member of the Lasan High Honor Guard and a warrior. Now, snap out of it and stand up straight, soldier!” It had been a last resort, he knew. Some part of him could see Orrelios fighting to obey, because Alex knew he was. Orrelios was fighting to get out of there, too, and likely to get the kit out of there. It wasn’t enough. When the last of the bombs went off, the building shuddered, and with a great big sigh, it shook off the dust in its halls and began to crumble from the inside out.

They could see the end of the hall. The doors seemed to care less who passed through them, as they were all open. Within walking distance, a door to the outside was visible; they could nearly reach safety. A relative term for sure, but at least they would not have had the threat of being crushed under the immense building looming over their heads.

The open air was waiting for them. Alex could see an afternoon sky dusted with orange, and he kept his gaze fixed upon that sight until he felt relief dare to peek its head out from under the covers. 

They would have made it, too.

That is, if not for the pull. At first, Alex didn’t understand. The unlikely band of teammates (and he used the term quite loosely) had almost reached the exit, but were not quite free of the dark Imperial hallways, so why weren’t they moving? Every part of him was halted, frozen where he stood on the floor beneath him. Something held him there, perhaps an invisible hand or power he could not see. A ray shield? No, that didn’t make sense, he couldn’t so much as twitch.

Alex didn’t have too long to wonder what had halted him or the two Lasats where they’d stood. The very same power instead began to pull at the weakened floor beneath him. It crackled as the supports were pulled away. Stone and steel yielded to a force stronger than gravity itself. 

For a moment, they hovered in the air above where the floor had crumbled below them. It was for such a brief moment, he’d come to doubt it ever happened, but it had, in fact, happened. The moment they were no longer held up against the will of gravity, the planet’s force took hold, and Alex lost his own grip on both Orrelios and the kit. Tumbling downwards and apart from the Lasats, Alex watched the sun rip itself from his fingertips, and descended into absolute darkness.

* * *

“No,” Ezra’s breath trembled. He stared in horror at the pile of rubble from the rooftop’s edge only a ways down from where they had fled. Kanan and Sabine stood beside one another a few steps behind him. “NO! No, no no, this can’t be happening!” He choked. 

Kanan and Sabine stared ahead at the same wreckage of the sentry droid terminal. The helmet in Sabine’s hand hit the rooftop with a heavy clank of metal and old stone colliding. “It’s my fault,” She said softly.

Ezra’s hands flew up to twist into his hair. His legs grew unsteady. “I promised.” The words were rich with guilt. “He said he would. ALEX!” the Padawan shouted, backing up from the roof’s edge and cupping his hands around his mouth. “ALEX!”

Kanan lunged forward and grabbed Ezra by the arm. He pulled his Padawan back, hissing under his breath. “Are you crazy? Ezra, what are you doing?”

“We have to find him, Kanan. He needs our help! He could be out there, alone and hurt. We have to  _ do _ something!” Ezra said. He moved to hurry off, but Kanan’s grip remained firm.

“Or, the Imperials have him by now!” Kanan said harshly. 

Ezra nodded. “Exactly. Which is why we have to go and find him. We have to help him, Kanan!” he frowned, looking at Kanan’s hand. “Let go of my arm.”

“We can’t help Alex, Ezra.” Kanan said softly.

On the rooftop silence cracked its whip. “What?”

“Ezra, I’m saying no.”

“But Kanan, it’s Alex. He’s one of us. He’s part of the crew. We  _ have _ to.” Ezra stared with defiant eyes through Kanan’s and into his soul. 

Kanan tried his best to shake off the sheer discomfort he felt at Ezra tapping into every emotion he could think of. “We can’t. Alex can’t be helped, Ezra!”

Ezra’s breath shook, and his voice wavered. “What do you mean?”

Kanan sighed, taking both of his Padawan’s shoulders in his grasp. “Alex might be out there somewhere. He may even be on his own, trapped under all that rubble. But he could be injured, Ezra, and there isn’t a whole lot of time or even air for him down there.”

Ezra’s brows furrowed, looking up at his Master with doe-eyes that begged Kanan to reconsider. “We have to get going now. Now, Kanan. You’re right. He’s running out of time!” Ezra pleaded. Desperation cropped up and sank its teeth into his throat. It threatened to swell shut as Ezra failed to fight back his tears.

“Ezra,” Kanan sighed. “There’s a very real chance that Alex… Well, he ran out of time a while ago. That he’s not alive under that building.”

“NO!” Ezra jerked back from his Master as if he’d been burned. “Don’t say that! He could still be alive! He’s your best friend! How could you say that about your best friend, Kanan?” When Kanan didn’t reply, Ezra shook his head even as the tears slipped freely past his eyes. “No. You’re wrong. I’m going down there to try and help Alex.”

“Ezra!” Kanan reached out to stop his Apprentice before he made any reckless decisions that could cost them another Spectre. Kanan barely caught the lining of that orange jacket, but Ezra tore it away. He made it to the roof’s edge as he ran from Kanan and jumped. Kanan’s heart stopped. “Ezra!” Pleas turned to fear; he’d jumped off the rooftop.

Yet, Ezra was running past massive clusters of still burning rubble in the streets, back from where they’d come. Ezra didn’t so much as check if Kanan and Sabine were following. Kanan frowned when he turned back to look at Sabine. Her blank stare at an invisible point of focus remained unchanged. It threw a wrench in his plans to go after Ezra. Kanan was torn between the two kids and realized he was no longer in control. 

“Sabine?” Kanan asked. It was a mix of gentle and anxious. “Sabine!”

“It was my fault,” She said, as vacant as her eyes were. Her gaze passed through Kanan on the mountain of rubble that would swallow Ezra up if he didn’t go after his Padawan. Sabine, however, he could have usually depended on to take care of herself. The look in her eyes said otherwise. He couldn’t leave her, but he also couldn’t stay. The Lasats would be coming soon for all of them.

“Kanan!” Hera shouted, running up to where they stood on the rooftop, a streak of ashen black across the side of her face. She reached them, no sooner than Sabine whimpered, and her legs gave out. Hera caught hold of the young warrior and ran one hand up and down her back as soothingly as she could muster. “Sabine, what happened?”

“I- I shot him.” Sabine said numbly. Hera crouched beside where Sabine had fallen on the stone dusted in black and smoke. Sabine’s face was emptied of everything besides pain, and Hera’s expression suggested she was not much better off, twisted up in confusion.

“Shot who?” Hera asked, but Sabine didn’t reply. Hera looked up at Kanan who she could see was ready to run. “Kanan, what happened? Where’s Alex? Where’s Ezra?” She pressed. “What is Sabine talking about?”

“Hera, I, it’s,” Kanan shook his head. “Where’s the  _ Ghost _ ?” 

“I landed it not too far from here. Chopper’s watching over it. I had to come find you. They’re jamming our comms.” Hera explained. “I’d say they know we’re here.”

“Get Sabine there where it’s safe. I have to get Ezra.” Kanan said. He left no room open for discussion.

Hera’s face contorted into a mix of horror and frustration. “Get Ezra from where? Kanan, what aren’t you telling me? Where is-?”

“Now isn’t the time, Hera.” Kanan snapped. “The Imperials are coming. We’ll meet you back at the  _ Ghost _ . Be ready to leave as soon as we get there.” The Jedi ordered, leaving Hera before she got the chance to argue. Kanan ran up to the edge of the rooftop and tapped into the force to push himself forwards in the same direction as Ezra. He had to trust Hera would do as he’d asked to focus on his next task. 

Their bond as Master and Apprentice had grown, undoubtedly, but its strength had yet to become something he could rely upon. This time, he had no choice. Kanan reached out into the force surrounding him. Its power reached back in turn a weary wave offered in his direction. It made him nervous. As a youngling and then as a Padawan, he’d never felt such strain on his connection to the force.

The death of the Jedi across the galaxy had brought that in full force, but the more he focused, the more strained the light side of the force was; he could feel it. The tension was so different from the damage his bond with the cosmic Force had sustained after his Master’s death. 

But this was no time for mulling over his feelings. Instead, Kanan focused on Ezra, whose pain bled through the Force enough he could sense it despite the blockage between them, a barrier in the Force he suspected Ezra had thrown up to try and shield himself. That connection between Master and Apprentice still jarred him, mostly because he’d never been able to experience much growth of it while a Padawan himself. If he could sense Ezra’s pain, he could sense Ezra, and while it wasn’t easy, Kanan saw the movement out of the corner of his eyes when headed in the direction the Force had offered him.

What he saw next stunned him. Ezra was completely immersed in the Force. His concentration was unparalleled to any other time they had trained together. Both of his eyes were squeezed shut, with one hand reaching out in the air. Ezra didn’t acknowledge Kanan’s arrival, and instead, turned his hand over, gradually moving it to his side. While this alone was a surprise to Kanan, the source of his speechlessness was the chunk of rubble as large as a ship levitating in the air in front of them. 

“Ezra.” Tracking the movement of the massive pile of fused metal and dura-crete across the air and above the street, Kanan exhaled softly. Smaller pieces fell from it and dropped to the ground. Twisted grates, crackling bundles of wires and even rocks nearly as large as Kanan, one by one, from the mountain of building materials passing over their heads.

Ezra’s concentration grew strained. His formerly unbothered expression wrinkled, but he maintained control over the massive chunk of rubble, breathing in deeply. Fewer pieces of debris fell, and he crackled open his eyes for just a moment. The rubble hit the street’s surface with an enormous crashing sound, and Ezra’s eyes shot wide open. Shaking Kanan out of his trance, the resounding echo bounced down the smoke-filled streets. 

_ I didn’t teach him-  _ Kanan turned his head to stare at Ezra. “How did you do that?”

“The Force… I could tap into it in a way I’ve never been able to before,” Ezra said, his eagerness reappearing as if moments before, he hadn’t performed a feat many who were far more disciplined in the way of the Force would have failed to do. “Kanan, it’s incredible. Like someone reached out to me through the Force and did it for me!”

The Jedi shook his head. “Ezra, what are you doing?”

Those blue eyes gave Kanan a hopeful look, it fractured a piece of him to have to crush it. “I’m saving Alex. He’s going to die down there unless we do something.” Ezra waved for Kanan to follow him as Ezra made his way to where he’d pulled the rubble from. “Come on, I think I see a way in over there!”

Kanan’s firm grasp on his Padawan’s shoulder stopped Ezra from taking more than two steps. “Ezra, listen to me.”

He shook his head and pointed out into the remains of the Imperial Security Terminal. “That’s your best friend out there, Kanan. Your family. He’s alive! He has to be! The Force is telling me-”

“What you want to hear!” Kanan shouted. “That isn’t the Force. That’s just you. Alex? Alex is gone, Ezra. He’s not under all that rubble, and he’s not waiting to be rescued because no one survived those bombs. Gerrera-” He sighed. “Leigh, she was very thorough.”

“No!” Ezra felt tears stream down his cheeks. “No, no you’re lying. He promised! He promised me he was going to be okay!” 

Kanan rubbed his face with his free hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I know, Ezra. I know.” The Jedi pulled Ezra into his arms. 

The Padawan trembled in his Master’s embrace. “I promised him.” A terrible sob followed by a choke wracked his body. “I told Alex I’d do my best. I promised him I’d be there for him.”

“You did your best,” Kanan said, pushing aside his resurfacing grief to reach Ezra at his most vulnerable and painful moment. “Your best is all you can do, and you did it. I believe in you. You should, too.”

He gasped in the pain, strong enough it was nearly physical. His lungs ached, failure a crushing pressure on his chest. “It wasn’t enough.”

“Neither was mine, Ezra,” Kanan frowned at the wreckage of the droid terminal. “Neither was mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whaaa, this is the setup for an Honorable Ones moment? No way, where on Earth did you get that idea from? ;)


	6. The Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan shows Ezra some of the true horrors of this Empire while the Lasats are on the hunt for the Jedi. A dangerous enemy makes their debut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s chapter 6! There was some world building in here I adored while writing, and hopefully it illustrates what kind of Empire exists under Lasan’s firm hand with which the Lasats govern the galaxy.
> 
> So much thanks to @shipsfrecklesandhorseface for beta-ing and pointing out when I mistyped something or where I could better explain a concept. This story wouldn’t be half as good without you!!

One of the most beautiful places in the galaxy was the Lasat capital of Y’rigon. Of course, it had weathered war after war, and long since become a symbol of Lasan’s strength, and one of the reasons for the planet’s place at the head of the Consortium. Carved out like the curved palm of a hand, the mountain opened outwards into a beautiful, sprawling city, the stone buildings pouring into the very edges of the valley, not too far from where the river crept along the jungle’s mouth.

Of course, it was not an unblemished city, but the issue Tazalye was referring to was not the scorching ruins of what had once been the Imperial Security Complex. No, the Complex was a problem he could deal with in due time, and the Lasat buried underneath it. Of course, the General’s absence would prove to be a great challenge. If word got out that Orrelios was missing, or presumed dead, there would be a power grab. 

No, it was best the truth be buried for the moment. Admitting weakness while the Consortium was so frail would be suicide on Lasan’s part, and their threading control over the galaxy would be challenged. The smoke and twisted metal was a reminder of another war, one that had forever marred their great world by sending it down a path too close to the Clones and the fallen Jedi.

The Zygerrian attack on their homeworld left many more scars than those on the warriors who had fought and died to save their people, or the ones that had gone to war against the Separatists. Those who fought the Clones carried the deepest wounds of all. 

Yet, again, the issue in his eyes laid over the elegant stone building, a newer structure built during the waning years of the Clone Wars. Not as large as the Temple of the Light and Sun, but one that stood quite literally against every practice of their people and their culture that had ever come to pass. It was a testament to the grief of a fallen General, a tomb closed to the public, erected in the memory of a warrior who was not their own. 

Leayn Kenyze’s body remained entombed in this stone husk, and none but the General himself dared to pass through those doors. Many priestesses had taken issue with the tomb, citing a number of reasons why neither Lasan nor the Jedi Order kept the bodies of their fallen warriors, but General Orrelios silenced them all with a glare and an order no one dared to defy. 

The General’s rage was unparalleled in the days following his return to Lasan after the battle of Raxus. Tazalye knew Orrelios had planned to bring Leayn Kenyze home with him to Lasan, but no one could’ve anticipated what happened on Raxus, or the unrelenting anguish, masked as blood-boiling fury, that followed Garazeb Orrelios for the rest of his years.

With a scoff, the Lasat turned away from the building, one he had been trained to find and forced to loathe over years of seething hatred for its existence, and watched the fading sunlight over the horizon. As the sunlight dissipated, so too would any hope for the flowers in the Temple, or in the tomb. The Lasat could see the brilliantly colored vines in his mind’s eye as they began crumpling and dying under the light of the three moons. 

Good. What was about to transpire was best done in the darkness, and without the prying eyes of priestesses spouting the essentiality of keeping the sunlight within one’s mind to keep a true warrior’s moral compass.  _ Kray spit. _

“You! Zygerrian,” the Lasat barked, standing behind the smaller man. His armor was scratched and worn, but the Zygerrian’s sneer was as fresh as the darkness that enveloped the sky. “You are dismissed.”

“Dismissed?” The Zygerrian shouted. “I am dismissed? Who are you to order me around?”

“I am the Lasat in command of this assignment. If you have an issue with how I conduct my business, you can discuss it with the Consortium.”

The lights of gunships crept over the wreckage, each hovering above different patches of what had once been a great symbol of the Imperial Consortium’s strength and security.  _ Now, _ the Lasat thought irritably, _ it is a declaration of war. _

“I don’t understand. Why are you in command here?” One of the Zygerrian slave drivers asked. “General Orrelios is the overseer of Lasan’s security forces, and he is stationed here in Y’rigon with us.” 

The obliviousness of the Zygerrian was irritating, but the Lasat nodded regardless of his stupidity. 

“Why, I’m sure you have less authority over me than I over my slaves. Who are you to tell me what to do? You are barely a Commander, much less a General!” 

“Your powers of observation astound me, slaver,” said the Lasat Commander, sarcasm dripping from his every word as he stared out over the wreckage, growing darker by the minute. 

“How dare you speak to me that way. I’ll have you know I am the overseer of the best Imperial slaves in this entire city!” 

“And I am Commander Tazalye, of the Lasan High Honor Guard.” A dangerous look in Commander Tazalye’s eyes appeared, and the Zygerrian took a step back. “If you bothered to pay attention to your surroundings, you would realize you are flanked on either side by members of the High Guard, whom I doubt will be eager to defend you or your poor choice of words.”

“But, General Orrelios-”

“I am in command.” Tazalye barked. “General Orrelios has entrusted me with this responsibility and his life on the battlefield many times. If you think yourself more qualified to oversee this situation, then by all means, demonstrate as much.”

The Zygerrian shook his head slowly, eyes wide in fear. “My apologies, Commander Tazalye. I meant neither you nor the Honor Guard any disrespect.” He bowed his head and backed away from the overlook they were standing on. 

Tazalye lifted a hand. “Wait,” he ordered. “Oh, I don’t agree.”

The Zygerrian flinched. “Pardon?”

“You did mean to be disrespectful. Your intention was exactly that.  _ Disrespect _ .” At the wave of the Commander’s hand, two Lasats on either side of the Zygerrian grabbed him by the arms and forced him to the ground. Dirt scuffed the fabric of his uniform, but the Zygerrian paid it no attention. His gaze was fixed solely on the crackle of energy of each bo-rifle his wardens held, dancing in his eyes as the sun fell on the horizon. 

“It was a mistake, it won’t happen again,” The Zygerrian said a little too rapidly, straining an uneasy laugh.

Tazalye turned his gaze from the rubble and considered the nearly panicked Zygerrian. He maintained his composure poorly, Tazalye noted with a sneer. “No, you are correct. It will not happen again. My honor and the honor of my guardsmen will remain intact. You, however, are a different story.”

“No, I apologized. I am truly sorry,” He attempted to rise to his feet once again, and both guards prodded him with their staffs. He fell to the ground with a cry of pain. “I will endeavor to be more mindful in the future.”

The commander waved his hand, cape sweeping in the rustle of air under the gusts of wind made by the approaching gunship. “I don’t think you will,” he said, expression remaining unchanged when the Zygerian’s strangled cry filled the empty space the terminal had formerly occupied. “Have the forces here begin clearing the rubble and ensuring the area is secure, while your unit investigates the reports of movement in the west by an unknown force. Report back to me once you find the cause of the irregular debris relocation in the nearby streets.”

The members of the honor guard burst forth, running off to complete their task with haste. ‘I am coming for you,’ he thought darkly, turning his full attention to the chasm in their great city. Stepping over the charred corpse of the distasteful Zygerrian slaver, he made his way to the Imperial transport with purpose in his movement.

Whether or not the guardsmen found anything was of little consequence. The real prize of the night still remained, under millions of tons of steel cage.  _ I will find you _ , he promised silently.  _ And you will tell me exactly what it is I need to hear, or they will pay dearly. All of those pieces of rebel scum. _

“Take me to the command center. We will begin our work there.” The pilot nodded, and they were off.

* * *

It felt as if a small child tugged on his pant leg. At first, timidly, but the pull grew frantic quickly.  _ Danger _ , the whisper in Kanan’s mind said. He looked to his Padawan, who stepped back.

“Ezra-”

“I feel it, too, Kanan,” the blue-haired boy said. “We... we have to leave.” If the weight of his guilt had grown any further, Ezra was sure his bones would break. It was true, he knew it, but it didn’t make turning his back on the site that was beginning to crawl with imperials any less present.

If he’d looked back, he knew, Kanan would never have been able to convince him to leave, but he also would have seen the weak beckoning of a nimble pale hand, reaching out in the hopes he would listen, only for it’s bearer to be disappointed. The Master and Apprentice moved through the streets of Y’rigon together, moments before the guardsmen appeared in the distance.

Although the Jedi were nimble warriors, Lasats were fast. Their abilities as hunters and as warriors were a part of day to day culture, one full of sensory, richness and beloved tradition. While their people were unique in this way, the Honor Guard’s members took this skill set back to the ancient ways of their ancestors. Countless centuries as hunters, or more accurately, as dangerous predators, had ingrained an instinct amongst their people. It was difficult to ignore the call of the hunt when it came.

One of the guardsmen knelt in the ash. His claws traced the paint outline of a boot. It was well worn in the soles, because the impressions of its bearer were deeper where the foot would rest in such a shoe. The wearer likely was a man, was tall, but did not run. Strange, though not nearly as strange as the mountain of steel not too far away.

Wordlessly, they moved past the pile that was out of place. Some guardsmen in polished battle-worn armor climbed over it, but no matter their path, the Lasats began to pair off. Running in different directions, they set out to hunt for their prey, for the source of the ones that dared to cry out against the power of the Empire; for the Jedi.

Some climbed the rooftops while others stayed on the ground. The guardsmen snarled viciously, turning their heads to see a flash of movement just over the edge of a distant roof. They moved after it, staring at the place where their prey had disappeared.

“Come on, let’s go,” Kanan hissed. He was checking at least a dozen times a minute to ensure Ezra was still behind him in the alleyways they hurried through to get to the crowded part of town. Life still went on, it seemed, but the Lasats, Wookies, Trandoshans even, were all jittery. Merchants shouted to tell stories of their wares, Entertainers drew attention from weary, unsettled shoppers. Flames even danced in lanterns around the ancient crossroads of Lasat tradition. For a moment, they forgot their plight.

“Woah,” Ezra breathed in awe. “Kanan, this is amazing.” he said, slowing on the edges of the sea of moving people. Kanan, to his credit, did not lose sight of the situation they were in despite the wondrous splendor of the traditional market.

“Come on, Ezra,” he insisted, as he moved one gloved hand over to push his Padawan’s head towards the ground. “Keep your head down.“

Although his Master sounded tense in a way he didn’t fully understand, he couldn't help it, and looked back up to soak up the streets filled with people. “What are you talking about? Kanan, this is incredible.”

“What are you doing? Keep your head down Ezra,” the Jedi hissed, forcing his Padawan’s eyes to the ground. “Do not look up, don’t make eye contact, and for the love of - Keep your head down.”

Ezra obeyed, and looked out the corner of his eye to see his Master doing the same. “But why? This place, it’s incredible.”

Kanan’s expression morphed into something hollow. “I know,” he said gravely. The knowledge seemed to make his body slump forwards, as if pained by the weight of a burden his back could not straighten under. When he was sure it was safe, he moved close to his Padawan to whisper. “Look around for the humans. The Twi'leks, the ones who aren’t Lasat’s or a similar species,” he instructed lowly.

“Don’t stare at anything.”

Ezra, heart beating furiously in his skull, breathed unsteadily for a moment. Daring to look up, he found himself perplexed. The market was wonderful, just like before. He concentrated intensely on the task his master had given him, face contorting in confusion the longer he looked around. “I said-“ Kanan grabbed the back of his head again, but he bowed his head before Kanan pressed down, “Don’t stare. Especially not at the Lasats.”

They kept moving through the crowds and, for the final time, Ezra lifted his gaze. He saw them. The humans, the Twi’leks, the Togruta and so many others, yet so few. On the far outskirts of the lively place, they carried crates, wore binders and collars, cried out under the sting of a Zygerrian’s whip. Ezra immediately looked down, fear plunging a blade into his heart. He gasped, the hurt of all those he’d seen now on a direct line to his heart through the Force.

Kanan’s firm, reassuring grip on his forearm was the only thing that kept him from being pulled into that abyss of darkness. “Why?” Ezra asked. “I thought Lasan hated these slavers.”

“They did, but they needed slaves. Behind every wonderful thing in the Empire, there is always at least one invisible injustice, if not more. Behind the scenes, every part of this story is drowning in discrimination and inequality. It’s what the Empire was built on, even if no one chooses to see it.” Kanan said grimly. “This place is only amazing for the ones with power.”

Kanan was right. He wasn’t even looking anymore, but all he could see was the same thing. The beauty of the market was gone, and Ezra felt the screams in the background lost their disguise as joyful or good. The flames became sinister, while shadows caught his attention more than the well-lit parts of the marketplace. “This is wrong,” he stated sadly.

He steered his student away from the general vendors and over towards the fresh-smelling fruits and foods where culinary geniuses worked. “This way,” Kanan said as encouragingly as he could muster.

“Shouldn’t we stay where the people are?” Ezra asked, even as his mouth watered at the smell of so many spices and vegetables.

Shrugging, Kanan reached over to test the meiloorun of a vendor. He smiled at the woman running the shop. “How much for one of these?”

“Five credits,” she replied.

“And if I get five of them?” Kanan asked.

“Twenty credits. They’re imported, it’s not an unfair price, you know,” she said, as if it were obvious.

“No, it is not, you’re very right,” the Jedi said. He reached into his pocket and pulled an assorted jumble of credits. The merchant took them, and offered a netted bag of the fruit with a smile.

“Tell your masters once they’ve tried them that I have the best fruits in the market,” the Lasat said. She beamed at them, and waved goodbye. Kanan and Ezra returned the farewell, and continued further down the food market.

“Kanan, what was that?” Ezra asked, looking between the fruit and his Master, as if to say: “the Imperials are chasing us and you’re stopping for fruit?”

Kanan steered them away from the main crowds near where the market place was, and through the trickle of people coming in and out of the busy place. “Lasats are hunters, predators, Ezra. If they caught our scent, and we didn’t throw them off, we’d be leading them right back to the  _ Ghost _ .”

“So you went through the market and food stands to-“

“Throw them off our trail. The meiloorun serves two purposes. One, as an additional mask for our scent,” Kanan explained, and Ezra nodded; it made sense.

The teenager looked up at him expectantly. “The second is a little more complicated, but it will make sense when we arrive.”

Afterwards, they had little trouble avoiding the Imperials. Kanan was right, as he often was. Any Lasats that passed were not bothering to look twice at a pair of humans in ragged clothing carrying a bag of fruit. Their weapons were very well concealed. Which made it easy to duck their heads and let the soldiers make assumptions based on arrogance.

“How do we know where Hera is?” Ezra asked. Two Lasats marched past them, and Kanan moved out of their way at their steady slow pace.

“Working on it,” he admitted, looking around for an inkling that their ship was nearby. All the streets looked the same. He could have taken to the rooftops again, but it was risky. Usually, he could sense Hera, but the Force was so blocked in a way, he even had trouble encouraging his Padawan.

“Hey, you! Stop!” A low voice ordered. Kanan and Ezra froze. “What do you have there?”

“Have where?” Ezra asked stupidly, but remembered to look down at the ground again.

“In the bag,” The imperial said irritably. “Let me see it.”

“Kanan obliged, and offered up the net of little fruits. “Only meiloorun,” he explained. “We have just come from the market.”

His words meant little to the Lasat. He took one out of the mesh net and tossed it to his companion. The silent Lasat examined the meiloorun and took a sizable bite out of it. He hummed appreciatively, and motioned for his companion to follow suit. He did.

“Where did you get these?”

“The marketplace, a few streets back. A citizen sold them to us from among her imports.”

“I thought all traffic had been halted in and out of Lasat space?” The Imperial frowned.

“The citizen of Lasan had a number of shipments. She was generous to sell them at a fair price before we returned to our ship” Kanan answered, head bowed.

“Your story checks out. Continue back to the commerce docks, no detours, and for the love of Ashla, try to keep to the side streets next time,” the soldier rolled his eyes, moving on his way while he munched happily on the free fruit, his companion close behind.

_ Commerce docks, where freighters and cargo are, _ Kanan realized. That had been their cover getting on Lasan in the first place, and the only lead they had for the moment. It wasn’t exactly close to where Kanan had last seen Hera, but in the city, it wasn’t easy to land the freighter without raising suspicion. It could have been as close as she’d been able to get. Not perfect, but not a bad lead.

What minimal signage in basic Kanan could see was poorly put together, and written Lasana espacies him. So, Kanan squinted in those darkened, moonlit streets. His grip was a little tighter on those remaining meiloorun fruits, unwilling to give them up without more of a fight.

Not yet defeated, he stopped in the middle of the street, surrounded by doors to a number of hangers. He breathed in, opening himself up to the lifeforce of everyone around him, and - wait where was Ezra going?

“Chopper!” Ezra said ecstatically. Chopper waved at the two Jedi and warbled as good a greeting as either had ever gotten from the droid. Kanan opened his eyes and followed Ezra over to the astromech. “Am I glad to see you!” He said, body slipping free of its tension when he patted the droid’s top affectionately.

“Chopper, where's Hera?” Kanan asked.

Chopper warbled a reply, (Ezra assumed it was: follow me) and squeaked past a few hangers until they reached a more neglected corner, dimly lit with small rodents-like creatures squatting in the trash to hiss at them. “Oh,” Ezra said, able to summon some sarcasm. “I don't know why we didn’t look here first for you guys.”

“Kanan scoffed. “Go in and tell Hera to get us going, but not to leave the planet just yet. The blockade is on lockdown. We’ll be on the  _ Ghost _ in just a second.”

Chopper grumbled. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Kanan, or not trust him, but the information seemed a little too easily obtained, especially when compared to their usual method of stumbling across that kind of information. It usually involved a lot more blaster bolts and then some trial and error. There was always a price, and a matter of when they paid it.

Kanan patted his dome as if to reassure him, which didn’t make much sense. He wasn’t upset, why would Kanan be nice to him.“ Just go tell Hera. We'll be right behind you,” the Jedi said gently.

Whatever. He didn’t care enough to pry, and he wasn’t exactly unhappy at the prospect of helping out Hera. The astromech resigned himself to listening to Kanan, at least for the moment.

The two Jedi watched Chopper disappear into the hanger, following after him at a significantly slower pace. Kanan pulled Ezra into a side-hug, and the two of them felt a bit lighter at the sight of the  _ Ghost _ . Even in the belly of the beast it was still home. “Kanan how are you going to tell Hera?” Ezra finally asked.

His good mood, however much he’d needed it, left in a hurry. Kanan looked down at his Padawan’s pained eyes. “I’ll take care of that. I promise. You just go and check on Sabine. We’re getting out of here.”

The engines of the Ghost came to life as if on cue, and the two of them rushed onto the ship when Chopper threatened to leave them behind.

* * *

Hera was in her element. Sure, she could hold her own in a shootout, and even give a few bar brawlers a run for their money. Her father saw to it his daughter would be able to take care of herself. She, on the other hand, had brought herself to the ends of the galaxy to learn how to fly. Somethings she had excelled at in a way she just didn’t at cooking or fighting. Kanan would have argued otherwise when it came to the latter, she knew, but just as readily agreed about her potential for a culinary career. The  _ Ghost _ responded readily to her easy directives, as if her ship were as eager to leave this place as her.

Once Chopper had returned, grumbling about the boys being back on board, she breathed a sigh of relief while the  _ Ghost _ glided smoothly over the city now a beautiful lit up stone of warmth. The mission had gone sideways, there was no denying it, but once they’d put some distance between the  _ Ghost _ and the city of Y’rigon, she felt so much better. The doors to the cockpit whooshed open, and she smiled at the sound of those aging boots on the metal floors. 

“Tracking dirt all over the inside of my ship again, I see,” she teased. He laughed, but it was a second later than she’d expected and forced. “ I’ve got us in the air for now, and we’re headed for one of the cities in the south hemisphere. It’s pretty big enough for us to hide, but not enough that will run into too many Imperials.” 

Kanan took his seat beside her, leaning forward. He seemed worlds away. “ I'm guessing Chopper talked to you about the blockade then.”

“Yes, he did.” Hera saw him out of the corner of her eye, fiddling with something in his hands, a small handmade netted bag. “What do you have there?” She asked teasingly, fiddling herself with a few extra flight systems.

“Trinket from the market. We slipped through to make sure the Lasats lost our scent before we got to the Ghost,” he said truthfully. “How was it getting back with Sabine?”

Hera’s smile faded. ” Alright. We had a little bit of a close call, but we made it back to the  _ Ghost _ without too much trouble,” she replied, engaging the autopilot to turn and look at the clearly rattled Jedi. It took a moment, mostly because the silence in the cabin reminded her that they were no longer focused on escaping the Imperials. At least not for the moment. She breathed in slowly through her mouth and then out through her nose.

“Kanan?” Hera asked, placing one hand over his two, to still his nerves twisting their fine woven strings around his throat.

He looked up with tired eyes at the Twi’lek. As much of a warrior he’d grown into, Kanan had never been a soldier, or at least not by any conventional means. This, too, almost kept her from asking. The look in his eyes haunted, too similar to Sabine’s from the rooftop, for her to willfully ignore.

“Kanan, what happened today?” She asked cautiously. Every part of her hoped the look he was giving her was only temporary, but a war-hardened woman, such as herself, couldn’t stop herself from listening to a more sinister line of thinking.  _ This isn’t going away anytime soon is it? _ She thought to herself.

No she couldn’t see it, her expression morphed into something crestfallen before Kanan’s eyes. He leaned back into the copilot’s seat, face buried in his hands. “It’s complicated, Hera. I don’t even really understand it myself,” he admitted.

She placed a hand on the back of his neck and pulled the distraught man into an easy embrace. She had no expectations, he knew, but she held him as if it were the most natural thing in the galaxy. For either one of them, it was the only thing that made any kind of sense. “Tell me?” Hera asked.

No was an option. He could have told her no and continued on his way for a little while longer, but there was a push within him to just tell her. Aside from being incredibly selfish to keep the truth from her, it was wrong to mislead her. “Alright,” he agreed. She made no motion to let him go, still standing strong.

He had to relish in the moment, One last moment of peace for his love. The next she would lose a piece of herself, she would hurt in that way she had been forced to too often in her life. She would lose Alex.

* * *

Alex’s chest rose and fell slowly. Lungs filled without any hurry, not needing to claim the air in a frantic desperate wheeze. He hadn’t meant to slip into this darkness, even though he hadn’t had much control over it, but it was warmer where he laid, easier to curl up on himself and push away the rest of the world. 

His mouth pulled into a frown, and Alex tried to pull his legs closer, but they didn’t move in the way any worn body would drag its limbs in the haze of sleep. Alexsandr felt it before he even opened his eyes, a sharp shooting pain up his leg and the dull throb of a number of other parts of his body. Brown eyes opened, but they saw nothing. They could not see the jagged cutaways of stone, of metal, the bo-rifle a few meters away; not yet at least. 

They could not see that he had been left behind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun... 😳


	7. The Empty Bunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapped on Lasan, forced to keep a low profile, the Ghost crew feels the gaping hole amongst their ranks. The Spectres are pushed to confront the source of their grief without distractions to prevent feeling the loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finallllyy this chapter is out!!
> 
> I haven't updated since I started working again, I'm sorry!! 
> 
> So much thanks to the lovely @shipsfrecklesandhorseface for beta-ing this chapter and catching the places where my brain fell through the cracks and left me behind mid-sentence.

While Hera laid there in her bunk, the sun stretched over the planet’s surface, skimming across the Ghost, hidden at the edge of the thick jungle. As the seconds moved past, the jungle life stretched into the newfound, or rather rediscovered, warmth. Even so, she could not shake the feeling the galaxy stood still. Before anyone else had woken up, she had the ship to herself with the comfort of knowing she was not truly alone.

It was easy somehow to pretend like the Empire and the Rebellion had become a game she could put away when she’d had enough. Even as the galaxy kept tearing through time, her world stopped. She didn’t have to be Hera Syndulla or to deal with all the things that came along with being her. She didn’t have to face her grief, or worse, the grief of her crew mates.

The Ghost’s familiar, metallic smell filled her lungs with air, a few hints of wayward spice in tow. Kanan had been cooking, trying to keep everyone fed when ration bars didn’t seem appetizing enough for the grief-stricken spectres. It had made her smile, but her guilt grew at the memory of her yelling at him.

——

“More secrets? More lies? Kanan, you know how I grew up. You know I hated it when people, when my family kept things from me!”

“I didn’t lie to you!” He said sharply.

“You didn’t tell me. I would have liked for you to have been honest. Is that so hard?” Hera demanded, crossing her arms.

“We needed you at your best, Hera! We had to get you out of the city!’

“And that’s the other thing!” She shouted. “You made that decision on your own. Without any input from any of the rest of us. You didn’t even ask!”

“You know why I didn’t ask!” He threw his hands up and stood in frustration. “Hera, a building collapsed on top of him!”

“What if Ezra was right?” Hera asked, standing up behind him. 

He turned to stare, the bland expression he was wearing only making it worse. “What?”

“Ezra said he felt something, that he told you he was going to save him!” Hera snapped.

“Ezra felt his own grief and desperation,” Kanan said.

“Even if that’s true, would it have killed you to try?”

“You know, it might have,” Kanan muttered bitterly. He turned away.

“Kanan, it’s Alex. He’s your friend, our friend! I just- he could still be alive under there, and you walked away from him!” she yelled, wrought with frustration and a near overpowering anguish. “We have to go back. I’m turning this ship around.”

The Jedi glared at the wall across from him. He wrestled with himself, fighting the anger rising up within him, but not the words he’d formed to hurt her. “You want to go down that road? Fine. You could be right, he still could be alive down there, but whether it was when those bombs went off, or ten seconds ago, or even hours from now, Alex dies under that rubble. There was no way to get him out, Hera. I couldn't have done it, and neither could any of the rest of us. He was kriffed the moment Gerrera set off those bombs, and the thought of my friend suffocating under the weight of thousands of tons of cold, Imperial tyranny, or bleeding to death, alone, half blown to pieces isn’t something I can let myself think about right now.”

The Twi’lek stood in silent pain. Even when he was angry, he’d never lashed out like that before. “That isn’t the Kanan I know.”

He clenched his jaw. “It probably isn’t. But I can't be the Kanan you know and keep our family in one piece, Hera. I just can’t. We’re on Lasan, and we’d better start acting like it.”

“We aren’t Lasats,” she said, almost too quietly for him to hear after their shouting. “We aren’t Imperials. We are not them. That’s the point, love. It’s what separated us from the Empire. Who we are,” She pulled the exhausted man into her arms, pushing aside her anger, her grief to focus briefly on him.

“I couldn’t save him, Hera,” he said. “I wanted to, I tried, but I never would have gotten to him in time. I’m sorry.”

The pilot stood in the ship’s cockpit as the Ghost continued on it’s way over the dark night sky. “I know, I’m sorry too,” she said, running her fingers through his hair affectionately.

The regrets Kanan would have for years to come hadn’t needed to be compounded by her own emotions. She’s not been wrong in what she’d said, but certainly not right to shout at him about it.

“He told me,” Kanan said, voice muffled in her jumpsuit.

Hera frowned. “He told you what?” she asked, frowning at the confession she didn’t understand.

“Alex. He told me that she was dangerous. That Gerrera got people around her killed, just like her father,” Kanan said. “He told me, and somehow... I still let it happen?”

Hera scowled. “Leigh Gerrera has taken enough from us today. Don’t you think for one second she’ll keep taking from us. It isn’t your fault, but we have to keep her from hurting anyone else. Or it will be our faults next time.”

———

To stop Leigh, however, proved to be a far more difficult task when trapped on Lasan. The blockade remained, and no ships were permitted through. The Ghost was no exception, and Hera knew patience was their best bet. She also knew patience was going to be difficult for all of them. 

Sabine and Ezra had fallen asleep on the floor of her room, surrounded by a fortress of blankets and pillows. Hera suspected it would become a habit from the two of them. Sabine’s shell shock wore off after she shuffled around the Ghost the day following the incident in Y’rigon, but she was too devastated to be left alone. 

Ezra volunteered to stay with Sabine, and no one complained about him abandoning the room across the hall. Hera knew all too well she didn’t dare imagine stepping into Ezra’s bunk, but there was no way for Hera to understand the terrible absence Ezra would be forced to face if he returned to his empty room alone. 

Already, the missing piece in the Ghost had the ground sinking beneath their feet, and his absence hollowed out a piece in each other's hearts, slowly but surely. Even Chopper was bizarrely quiet and not as argumentative, despite how much trouble the astromech usually caused.

Kanan, she suspected, had gone to the market to bargain for something to cook with for the day. Hera sighed wondering vaguely when she would get out of bed. The answer came to her in the air. Morning time was not her strong suit, but unintentionally she had been hardwired to respond to the bitter smell of caf. It wafted through the air, and she breathed it in gratefully.

 _Wait- caf?_ She wondered. _At this hour?_ It wasn’t Kanan, Hera knew, because he could cook but not brew, and Sabine was less of an early riser than she was. For a moment, when she threw off her covers and her two feet landed on the floor, her imagination pulled her alongside of it. The only person that ever didn’t suck at brewing was- no, better not to say it, even if it was the only thing she could think of. Her hope was consuming reason, and she rushed past Chopper without a word down the hall into the common rooms to see a gloved hand holding a mug while the other poured the piping hot liquid into the adored cup.

She looked up to see the owner of those hands and tried desperately not to look disappointed.

It was Ezra, because of course it was. He was concentrating as he poured, trying not to spill anymore than he already had. Guilt ate away at her immediately. It was selfish of her to be upset when Ezra was so obviously doing his best to be there for their family. He was hurting too, but he’d gotten up to do something that was surely difficult for him. Hera put on her brightest smile and grabbed a cloth to help with cleaning up the mess he’d made. 

“Good morning,” she said gently, doing her best not to startle the padawan. He looked up at her and put down the pot of caf to pick up her mug and offer it to her with arms fully extended.

Ezra beamed when she took it and traded it for the cleaning rag she brought him. “Morning, Hera!” he said, smiling as wide as she’d ever seen it.

“It smells really good in here,” she said truthfully. The whole ship smelled good.

“Yeah, I made caf for you and Sabine,” Ezra explained. He paused to look up at her. “Do you like it?” he asked while shifting uncomfortably under her gaze. She had yet to drink any, he noticed, self-consciousness rising to kick him in the shins at the first opportunity.

The Twi’lek looked down at her steaming mug. It had all the characteristics of a good cup of caf, or at least, so far. She nodded and, as if to prove her sincerity, she brought the mug to her lips, exhaled softly and sipped on the drink. Her eyes widened, and she coughed, putting the mug down and trying to get air into her lungs again.

Ezra panicked, rushing over to help her, even if he didn’t know how he was going to. Hera, however, put her hand up to stop him and the other on her chest. Once her cough died down, she held up a finger and cleaned out the last of her choking.

“Hera, I’m so sorry,” Ezra said dejectedly.

She shook her head. “Don’t be, you just surprised me is all Ezra,” She confessed.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” he mumbled, face falling even more.

Hera laughed, still shaking her head. “No, it isn’t.”

“But you choked on it!”

“Yeah, and it’s really not bad caf, Ezra. It’s pretty good, actually,” Hera said.

“It is? You like it?”

“It is, and yeah, I do,” she smiled, pulling him into a hug. “Come here.” Hera squished the Jedi-in-training, but he didn’t complain, he was too relieved he hadn’t accidentally poisoned her. “You take after your master, at least a little, even if his caf is terrible.”

“Hey, I resent that!” Kanan cried, looking appalled at the mess, in the, well, mess. “At least I don’t spill half of it on the floor. Geez, Ezra, did Hera get to drink any of that?” The man half-teased his now embarrassed padawan.

Ezra blushed, shrugging. “Sorry Kanan.”

“Just clean it up,” he rolled his eyes, placing the food he’d gotten from the marketplace down on one of the few caf-free places in the room.

Hera stopped the teenager with a smile. “Actually, why don’t you go see if Sabine would like her caf? The sun is up, and I was hoping to ask her to help me out around the Ghost once she’d gotten up and ready,” she said.

Blue hair ruffling, Ezra nodded before scooping up the pointed mug and shuffled carefully down the hall to check on Sabine.

Hera did wipe up most of the caf, and would have stepped back to check if she'd gotten all of it if not for a sudden presence behind her. Kanan slipped the rag away from her fingers and wiped up a small patch to the side she hadn’t seen. “You missed that one,” he explained, but didn’t say anything besides that.

It had been like that for a week. They had both said things during their argument, and both were upset with not only each other, but with themselves, too. The odd pair stood like this for a moment. Hera sighed.

“Do you think-“

“I know things-“

Both stared at one another. Kanan rubbed the back of his neck. “You go first,” Hera said levelly.

He shook his head. “I can wait, you go. I’ll just listen.” _And try not to argue with you again_ , he might have said.

She wouldn’t push him on this. Kanan would speak when he was ready. Besides, she really had wanted to go first after all. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I was upset, but that doesn’t make it right. But why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

“Alex is a part of this crew, but more importantly, he’s family.” She reminded him.

He frowned, but maintained eye contact. “I know.”

“I know you know, but did you even think about that back then? Because you didn’t care to tell me that our family member, our Alex, was in his grave, under what used to be a building that Leigh Gerrera blew to smithereens over your head.”

“I’m sorry, “ Kanan said numbly. “I just- the only thing I could think about was getting us out of there. You were the only one who knew nothing about it, the only one who wasn’t broken. I needed you to be okay,” he explained. “I was holding on by a thread. Hera, I couldn’t do that to you too. You saw Sabine, you saw Ezra and I. We barely made it back to the Ghost. It all happened so fast, I didn’t think about anything.”

“You don’t have to protect me,” Hera said.

The Jedi sighed. “ I guess it wouldn’t matter even if I tried. I’m not very good at it.”

Hera reached out her hand, smiling when Kanan took it and squeezed reassuringly. “We both know that’s not true, love. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like Alex was protecting you in there, not the other way around. He saved your lives. You weren’t meant to be protecting him at all.”

Kanan nodded, squeezing her hand in return. The two stared sadly at one another. “I wish I had.”

“The only way that would have happened is if you had stopped him from going down there and finding Leigh in the first place,” Hera reminded him, reaching to take his other hand, too. “Then I’d have lost all of you, and probably been captured by the Empire.”

The Jedi stood, letting his thoughts run free. “It doesn’t feel real. I feel lost, but no matter how terrible I feel, I just keep expecting to run into him.”

She nodded. “I know what you mean. This morning with Ezra, I almost wondered if it was Alex making caf like he always does.”

“He’s a good kid,” Kanan said. “Better than I was at his age. Probably always will be. I’m so glad we found him, Hera.” Kanan said softly. Much as he was proud of his student, he didnt need to shout it. Humility, or in this case not being an over confident; undertrained; fledgling Jedi, was a trait he wasn’t willing to lecture Ezra on just yet.

“What did you want to say to me?” Hera asked. Her eyes met his, staying fixed on one another as if it were the most natural thing in the world to get lost in each other's gazes.

Kanan barely shook off the trance. So deep he was in it. “Honestly? This about covers it,” he admitted.

She nodded, reaching for the last of the meiloorun fruits to eat while they waited. Kanan unpacked the last of his goodies as she finished the fruit. Hera then snagged the cooler but still warm caf, and mumbled something about watching the sunrise from outside. Kanan tried hard not to slice off his fingers and nodded absentmindedly while washing the knife and assorted vegetables.

The Ghost’s ramp wasn’t quite warm, but the sun kissed walkway was not uninviting, she concluded. Hera eased down on to the metal beneath her and sighed, eyes closed as she drank in the feel of the morning. It would be hotter later in the day, but for the moment, the weather was something she could enjoy.

Sipping at her caf again, she smiled. Ezra was a bit of a hidden gem, one she was very grateful for. He also had such a good heart, and one she dared not risk to lose in this war unless she had no other choice.

* * *

Ezra screamed, shooting up from his slumber in the makeshift bed. Sabine’s eyes opened and she reached for her blaster only to see Kanan kneeling by Ezra’s side. She sighed and put her weapon down again. Another nightmare, which would explain Kanan, and even Hera, app reading in the dead of the night.

The Twi’lek motioned for her to follow her out of the room. Yes, they were in her quarters, but Sabine was not cruel enough to banish Ezra to the space that had been his before it had ever been shared with Ezra. _Not for the time being at least._ She nodded, wordlessly slipping by the two Jedi to follow Hera, wherever she might lead.

They ended up outside in the starlight, sitting on the end of the Ghost’s ramp. “How are you feeling?”

The mandalorian sighed. “Like it isn’t fair,” she said.

“I can move Ezra into Kanan’s room if that would help,” Hera offered.

“No,” Sabine shook her head. “It’s not that. I kinda like having him around. I’m just... talking about everything I guess.”

“Which everything?” Hera asked. “The Galaxy, or the last few days?”

“Both, I guess. The galaxy being the way it is, that’s why we’re even here, why we lost...” She trailed off and scowled. “I hate it. All of it. Why does the Galaxy, this world, only ever take from us? From me?”

“I don’t know,” Hera said, looking out into the grassy plains they’d landed in, searching. “I wish things were different, that we could go back and stop the wars, the Empire, everything. Like restarting the Galaxy.”

Sabine scoffed. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I don’t know that it would be. I wouldn’t have ever met you, Kanan, not even Chopper.” She sighed, patting the ramp underneath them. “I never would have been able to learn how to fly, either. Never would have gotten the Ghost.”

“So you don't wish things were different?”

“No, I do, but I know things wouldn’t be the same without everything being the way they are.” Hera shook her head whimsically. “It’s not right, and it’s not fair, but it scares me to think about a galaxy maybe even worse than the one we have here in front of us.”

“So, just wishful thinking?” she asked, blue hair slipping into her eyes.

“Yeah. But you know what isn’t wishful thinking? Something you can count on?” Hera smiled, gently brushing those blue strands out of Sabine’s face.

She rolled her eyes and ruffled her hair a little the same way she had whenever her mother had done the same thing years ago. “What? That my hair will always have some personality to it?”

“That-“ she ruffles Sabine’s hair to “fix it.” “-Things will get better. Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but even when you can’t see a way out, every so often the galaxy will surprise you. I think this is one of those times. We just have to keep going in the meantime.”

Sabine nodded and fixed her eyes on the stars, either unwilling or unable to say or do much else. Eventually, she would be back to the Sabine they knew, if not close, but she would stay quiet for the moment, and that was okay. Progress. Slow and steady.

* * *

Hera opened her eyes to see the grasses of a thousands of plants wrinkling as if to smile at the blue sky with a beautifully sculpted face. Animals frolicked merrily, and she let herself watch them chase one another. The planet, despite its people, was a paradise . To think that the Empire had done so many terrible things in the name of this place, she might never have understood it.

The animals paused, and the grasses stilled. Hera frowned, putting the mug of caf down and sitting up. When she still didn’t see them, she stood, searching the open fields. The creatures popped up again, but this time she realized as they scattered, they were fleeing. _What were they running from?_ She wondered. Only people would startle them like that, and the only reason anyone would be coming in this direction would be because of them. She gasped. 

“Kanan,” She breathed, not taking her eyes off the horizon. He couldn’t have heard her, she realized. “Kanan!” Hera shouted, praying he’d be listening. “Kanan, I need you to come here, right now.”

Something fell up above, the loud crash up above her had said as much. She heard footsteps come into range on the ledge above the main cargo hold. “Hera, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Get Ezra. Tell him to get Sabine up now.”

“Why? What is it?” he asked. When Hera did not reply he fought back worry, doing his best not to jump to conclusions. “Hera?”

Chopper grumbled, Kanan was clearly no help. Disappearing down the ladder and making his way out of the Ghost proved as much, Chopper thought dismissively. A tired wheel squeaked as he made his way in the direction Kanan was supposed to have gone, determined to find Ezra and Sabine as ordered.

Stepping into the fields, Kanan hurried down the ramp the instant he didn’t see Hera. His eyes tore through the green meadow, across the twisted old trees, and past the rustle of flora as fauna fled. He saw her, and only was relieved for a moment, because she was running away. “Hera!” He shouted, running after her, cooking and children forgotten. “Come back, Hera!”

She either didn’t hear him, or wasn’t listening, because she didn’t stop, and disappeared down over the hilltop. The Jedi’s heart beat faster, and not just because he was running. He moved faster to close the distance between the two of them, and just as Ezra and Sabine emerged one after the other from the Ghost, he disappeared over the same hilltop.

“Kanan?” Ezra asked, baffled. “Where is he going?”

Sabine shrugged. “You’d know better than I would.”

“Well, I don’t. Stay here, I’m following him.” He ran off.

“Like hell I’m staying here!” She scoffed, running with him and abandoning Chopper, who had just appeared behind them. “Guard the ship, Chopper!”

It was certainly not a thank you, but the only recognition he would receive.

When Kanan finally caught up to her, he heard Hera crying, the sound interrupted every so often by laughter? And not just any laugher, it was Hera’s laughter he heard. “Oh, stars, thank the stars,” she said. He rounded the tree to see that she wasn’t alone.

“What’s going- oh.” Kanan’s hand fell from the place on his belt where he had gripped his saber’s hilt. No remarkably intelligent words came to mind. All the Jedi could do was stare.

“Kanan!” Ezra yelled. “Kanan, where are you- woah!” The Padawan shouted, tumbling headfirst down the steep hillside. He rolled and yelped when he reached the bottom, barely able to push himself up off the ground. He was fairly certain that if he looked there would be an Ezra-sized indent in the dirt.

Even when he pushed himself off the ground behind Kanan, brushing off the dirt now fixed to his clothing, Ezra didn’t think to look up. Sabine, more graceful than he was, slid down the bottom of the hillside on her feet, a silent mocking smile on her face.

“It’s not funny.”

“Sure it isn’t,” she grinned wider.

“It’s not,” he insisted but she laughed anyways, the sound a welcome one, even at his expense. Unfortunately, it vanished along with the smile on her face in an instant. She stared behind Ezra, past Kanan and her eyes widened.

“Oh my gods.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Sabine pointed, but Ezra didn’t turn around quickly enough for her liking, so Sabine took him by his shoulders and pulled. When Ezra kept staring at her, somehow still failing to grasp what she was trying to get him to do, Sabine grabbed his face and turned it in the direction she was pointing.

“Look,” Sabine breathed in awe. Ezra did, and at first he didn’t realize what she was talking about.

And then he saw it.

Hera had beaten all of them there and was squeezing the breath out of one frazzled-looking, tired, bruised man who, let’s face it, was more than happy to hug Hera back.

Alexander Kallus looked up at them with such relief in his eyes, even still in disbelief standing in Hera’s arms.

Ezra stared.

Alex didn’t notice, much less care. It wasn’t like Alex was seeing much of anything, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

“It’s Alex.” Ezra said dumbly, watching the wind rustle through his bunkmate's messy blond, hair.

Alex closed his eyes and sighed shakily as tears slipped past his eyelashes. He was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, Alex lives! (Technically that was revealed last chapter but now the Spectres know it, too!)
> 
> Up next, the beginning of an Honorable Ones episode, Role Reversal style.
> 
> Let the Kalluzeb commence!!


	8. The Buried Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Underneath the surface, Kallus attempts to unravel the complicated nature of what his survival requires. The tangled mess of emotions and guilt don't serve him beyond acting as an additional burden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to Cucurucha for inspiring me and hixystix for helping me out when I struggled to get this done. Bird's kind words encouraged me to keep going, so I got this finished before bed. The Honorable Ones setup was fun to write and I've really missed Rebel! Alex. Enjoy!

The swarm of hugs and laughter and wiping the tears that just wouldn’t stop from his eyes was enough to drive the already exhausted Alex into the ground. His feet ached beyond all recognition and- to be frank so did the rest of his body. 

Still, staying in the arms of his family, of the ones he’d fought so desperately to find since being separated no- since he foolishly walked away for one moment.

_ Everyone would have died if you hadn’t,  _ the still small voice reminded him, but Alex’s own tears wouldn’t stop falling. Hera’s hand moved up and down his back, but the longer he stayed still, the weaker his legs grew.

“Alex, thank goodness you’re alright,” Hera said, face buried in his shoulder. Her voice, muffled by torn, ripped and stained green fabric, was all it took. 

Taking a step back, Alex felt himself lean over and his legs give out beneath him. He didn’t hear his knees collide with the ground, but he felt it under his fingers. Some of the fresh cuts stung when the dirt crept into his skin, but Alex dug his fingernails into it regardless. Each tear that slipped past his nose and into the dirt gradually released Alex’s fear. Fear he wouldn’t find the Ghost; fear they left him behind on Lasan.

Fear they wouldn’t want him back.

_ They don’t know. No one will ever know.  _ Alex reminded himself, squeezing his eyes shut as if it would stop the tears he knew would only keep on coming. 

Hera’s hand found Alex’s shoulder, firm enough to announce her presence, but gentle enough she didn’t startle him. Kanan’s hand mirrored Hera’s, guiding Alex to sit back in the dirt and breathe through the unsteady shaking in his body. 

“You’re going to be alright,” Kanan said. “We’re here for you.”

Alex nodded slowly, wrestling with himself to internalize Kanan’s words. 

_ For now, _ a darker part of Alex whispered.  _ What happens when they learn what happened? What you did? _

I didn’t do anything, He argued back. I survived. I tried to stop Leigh, I-

Sighing, Alex looked up to see Ezra hovering close by. 

“Alex?” He asked uneasily.

Alex took a true deep breath and the corner of his mouth lifted upwards. “Yes, Ezra. It’s me.” Shoving away the last of his tears with the back of his glove, Alex met Ezra’s eyes.

Blue hair shifting in the wind, Ezra kneeled to be close to eye level and offered out a hand. Alex grasped his forearm and brought Ezra into a one-armed embrace. 

At the feeling of cool tears and Ezra shaking where he squeezed Alex’s ribs, Alex patted Ezra’s back and leaned back to let Ezra see the confidence with which he spoke. “I’m alright, I promise.”

“It was my fault,” Ezra choked. “I should’ve gotten you out, you were down there and-”

“And there was nothing you could do, Ezra,” Alex said firmly. “I made my decision, and it was not in any way your fault what happened. If anyone is to blame-”

“It’s Leigh?” Kanan asked, at which Alex nodded. “If I’d known she was going to try and pull something like this-”

“What would you have done?” Alex asked. “I didn’t see it coming either, Kanan. She wasn’t even supposed to be on Lasan.”

“I still can’t believe she would endanger the team or compromise the mission like that,” Hera scoffed, shaking her head. “No, wait. I can believe it; I’d just rather not think about it.”

Biting back a bitter comment about Hera not truly understanding what Leigh Gerrera had put Alex through; how she didn’t understand his pain, let alone have something worth trying to forget about Leigh Gerrera and the mission, Alex nodded. “I’d certainly agree.” 

“But, you’re really okay?” Sabine asked, her head turning from Alex to Kanan to Ezra and back to Alex again. “Nothing happened?”

The questions Alex had been dreading were already beginning to crop up, and he tried to keep himself calm. He failed. “I-” 

“I think that’s a question for another time, Sabine,” Kanan said. The stern look between Jedi and Mandalorian worked, at least for the time being. “We can ask Alex what happened later. For now, let’s get him to the ‘fresher.”

“The refresher?” Alex asked.

Kanan laughed. “Yeah. Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but you really stink.”

Alex’s jaw dropped and he reached over to playfully smack Kanan’s arm as he pushed himself to his feet. The two of them fell into the banter easily enough, and Alex sighed, tucking away whatever memories Alex didn’t want anything to do with faded away for the moment. “If I stink then why did you hug me?”

Raising his hands in mock surrender, Kanan backed away. “Because you came back from the dead! You deserved at least that much.”

“And now?” Alex asked.

“Now you deserve a nice long sonic,” Kanan said.

Alex laughed, shaking his head as he turned to face the rest of the Spectres. “So, what I’m being led to believe is you all agree with Kanan?”

“Well,” Sabine shrugged.

Ezra did not even attempt to ease the blow. “Yeah, we do.”

Hera scolded Ezra immediately, but Alex’s relief rushed through him enough he didn’t care to hear her or any of the others try to make their case about what it was Alex smelled like. He was home.

* * *

_ He shot up with a strangled gasp. Fingers scrambled for anything to hold onto, but there was nothing. He rubbed his eyes furiously. His room on the Ghost was certainly dark, but this was pitch black, and cold in a way space was not. Empty; it was the name of the feeling he realized. He felt so empty and alone.  _

_ His body ached, the early beginnings of bruises all across his skin making themselves known. He gasped in pain, face contorting in a discomfort riddled with surprise. “Argh- oh, ow,” he managed elegantly. He shook his pounding head with a whimper he muffled behind his hand, as if it would shake off the jarring sensation in his leg. The pain in his skull only grew worse, and although it fought for his undivided attention, it was only partially successful in its efforts. _

_ A different kind of pain, not quite physical, but potent enough to ache in his chest took hold. The emptiness was a different kind of hollow. Not just the place, but his heart was carved out from the inside, and he felt so isolated. Where was Ezra? Sabine, or Hera? Chopper, even? _

_ Where was Kanan, he wondered.  _

_ Searching the dark space, kept intact by a piece of metal that groaned under the weight of something it was clearly not equipped to hold, he squinted. Alex had trouble making out much of anything, but still better luck than he might have had under different circumstances. A few odd panels and lights were flickering meekly. He could see the chunks of what had originally been a cold metal husk of an Imperial drone , but in fragments only, something he was grateful for because he was in no condition to be fighting them off. It was an odd blessing, to have one less thing that was trying to kill him.  _

_ One cluster of damaged circuitry threw sparks of electricity in a thousand directions. Some crackled and fizzled out in a pool of water down the slope of rocks he was laying on. A groan of pain echoed in the open hollow room, and, he realized, it was not his own.  _

_ Alex whipped his head around to search for the source of the sound, and he inhaled sharply when he peered through a wall of tangled metal beams he would never be able to slip through. There laid the Lasat General, unconscious for the moment, but out of reach. Alex breathed deeply through his mouth, but when he went to release the air through his nose, it was no use, he knew he would not feel any better.  _

_ He cried out in frustration, head thrown back on that metal slab. His tousled blond head made a painful clang against what had formerly been an Imperial hallway. He could not bring himself to care past the wince of pained regret at the suddenly worse pounding in his head, _

_ The others were gone. Long gone, he suspected. Alex was on his own to survive this, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try. _

* * *

When everyone fell asleep, Alex slipped through away from where they gathered around the dejarik table, and down the hall to his room. Alex stepped through the doors and into the darkness of his and Ezra’s bunk. Visible only by what little light coming in from the hallway, both he and the room were submerged in darkness once the doors closed behind him. For a moment, Alex couldn’t see much of anything, and he squeezed his eyes closed.

_ Breathe _ , he reminded himself.  _ Just breathe. You can do this.  _

One hand fumbled with the controls for the lights, and Alex found one of the dimmer settings. He pressed the button, and found himself standing in the warmth of a yellowed lamp, so different from the cold, flickering lights he’d strained his eyes to see by just days beforehand. Home sweet home.

In his pocket, his thumb ran up and down the uneven cool rock in his pocket. It hummed, dare he say, happily at his touch, an easy warmth spreading through his body. Alex told himself it was not from the souvenir, but even he wasn’t sure the odd little glow wasn’t capable of as much. Alex closed his eyes and smiled sadly at the reminder of it falling into his hands for the first time, and every moment in between.

_ A laugh, his laugh, full and alive. Shivering under the weight of his bloodloss. The warm glow in the Lasat’s hands.  _

He pulled the rock out of his jacket and placed it on the shelf to his side. It glowed a little more feebly each night, as if in the time they’d come apart, so did the strength of the rock. It seemed all the more fitting when the memory of the Lasat walking away from him reared its ugly head. His fingers traced the odd nooks and crannies of the uneven surface, and he sighed, not yet willing to let it go.

Alex frowned. Logically, yes, he knew the bizarre circumstances under which they’d met had forged a relationship between Lasat and Rebel not even they could understand. Longer, increasingly shaggy red-blond hair in his eyes, Alex tried again to brush it and his regrets from the forefront of his mind. Still, it didn’t keep him from wishing the bond would have lasted longer, without knowing why he even wanted to befriend such a being.

Reason suggested Alex was not only being irrational, but a moron to boot, because of course such a connection would never last. Bonding over their mutual need for one another had been born out of a desire for survival, not any kind of companionship, meaningful or otherwise.

_ The rock struck his face before he thought to shield it from the child. Alex shouted again, the same blood-smeared hand flying up to hold his now stinging jaw. “What was that for?” he demanded. A child or not, she’d still thrown two rocks at Alex, and hit him in the face. . _

Yes, because that had been an ideal friendship.

He eventually let go of the rock, half expecting all the goodness and warmth in his body to flee. It did, just not in the way Alex expected. Alex blinked slowly at the sight of his bo-rifle on the wall, exactly where he’d put it the last time he’d been in his bunk. One of the aging strips of fabric he’d wrapped it with had come loose, he realized. 

Alex reached up to fix it, tucking the loose strip into a tightly wound part of the war-torn cloth. 

Nimble fingers brushed over the cool metal, those grooves and scratches an unusual symphony of familiarity across the crafted weapon. It felt so odd without the one mark he recalled from the bo-rifle of the Lasat, a peculiar engraving of a curved flame just under the main piece of rest of its bearer’s hand. Unfortunately, he never thought to ask what it meant, or what it was there for.

Alex sighed. He couldn’t exactly talk about what happened with the other Spectres either. Explaining it was like explaining the sky to someone who had never seen it. They had never reached out for something that was such a part of their world, yet so bizarrely otherworldly when in darkness.

Remorse curled into his mind like a badly beaten loth-cat.  _ They’ll never understand. _ Alex thought bitterly.

* * *

_ Waking up in the rubble was a deterrent, but being buried underneath it wasn’t as bad, he decided. Most of it was around him, or (as much as Alex tried not to think about it looming above him, if not below him. The metal ceiling groaned as if to remind him of that.  _

_ Gritting his teeth, Alex exhaled sharpy the moment he tried to move.  _ This isn’t so bad. Work through the pain, push through it,  _ Alex reminded himself. Ignoring the sharp pain in his leg and the burning of the raw skin of his fingers was difficult enough, without the added challenge of the constant fury with which he ached from head to toe. _

_ No, alright, it was pretty bad. His torn up jacket, while not exactly the epitome of fashion even before being buried under the Imperial Security Complex, was still functional. Alex shivered nonetheless; it was freezing down there in the rubble. The holster he’d previously held his blaster in was empty, thanks to Leigh, but Alex was no less deadly for it. His mind was quick to suggest wrapping the holster tightly around his right, probably broken, leg, but he would have to be able to get out of the rubble first to lick his wounds. _

_ Jaw clenched, Alex braced himself, knowing the pain would likely be more than he could handle silently. Both hands reached behind him and he pulled his one useless and aching leg out from underneath the rubble. No sooner had he tugged had one hand flew up to cover his mouth as Alex cried out in muffled pain. His shoulders trembled and he coughed, breathing raggedly.  _

_ Shaking the last echoes of that pain away, Alex took his opposite foot and planted it in the ground to push his body out of the hole he’d been in as if he were scooting backwards, hands scrambling to give him purchase. In a way, he was scooting, but he had to become and stay aware of the fact that rocks and other fragments of metal were tumbling down around him and to fill the space Alex left behind in the shallow pit of rubble. _

_ The debris would take Alex down, too, if he wasn’t careful. _

_ Eventually, Alex was satisfied with where he was, at least for the time being, and while still trapped under a massive building. He unfastened the holster to wrap it twice around his thigh, which was definitely broken, although the artery was thankfully intact. Alex was still alive, and it wasn’t like his thigh was filling up with blood at all, something he was more than thankful for. Even so, his gloved hands snapped the fastener shut and Alex winced, grunting in pain. Broken bones, bleeding or not, still hurt. _

_ It seemed fate wasn’t quite done bruising him and his ego just yet. He felt something impact the side of his face and Alex shouted outright in pain. Reaching to brush his fingertips over where he’d been struck, Alex felt and saw a warm red coating smear over the raw and burning skin.  _

_ “Ow,” he said lowly, looking up in confusion for the source of the rock. Was the roof caving in? he wondered. _

_ Alex saw a furious little lasat kit standing some distance away from him with another rock in her hands. “Was that you?” he asked incredulously. _

_ She didn’t reply and threw again. The rock struck his face before he thought to shield it from the child. Alex shouted again, the same blood-smeared hand flying up to hold his now stinging jaw. “What was that for?” he demanded. A child or not, she’d still thrown two rocks at Alex, and hit him in the face.  _ Twice _.  _

* * *

Gah, what was wrong with him? Rebels didn’t wonder about the hidden carvings on their enemies’ weapons; they used their own weapons against Imperials. What kind of rebel was he, anyways? What rebels knew about, in intimate detail, the subtle carvings of a warrior’s weapon of choice?

Although she hadn’t been anything but sincere, Hera’s words trickled into his mind again. “What happened to you?” she asked.

Ezra was shouting at Chopper while they all laughed at the droid’s antics. He’d snuck up behind Ezra while the teenager had been boasting about his status as an undefeatable warrior, scaring the Padawan just for the fun of it. Alex rolled his eyes at their antics, and looked over at Hera, grinning. “Huh?”

Hera shook her head, still smiling when she met his gaze. “You seem different. I just can’t tell how, or why that is,” the Twi’lek admitted.

Alex shrugged, but the smile faded from his face without him realizing as much. “Just glad to be back. And alive, too,” he said as if it were an afterthought. It wasn’t.

Surviving had been such an impossible feat, it made Alex question so much more than his own suitability as a Rebel. His entire world had been ransacked, even if it hadn’t changed in the slightest. Hera was right, he had changed. Alex was suddenly different, suddenly on the outside of the other Spectres. But why?

_ What happened to you, Alex? What’s wrong with you? Why are you so different? _

Surviving would cost him everything, if he let it. 

* * *

_ Alex was pissed. The little lasat picked up another rock, but this time, he was ready. Her aim was good, but Alex caught it before it hit him this time, and scowled at her. A small childish part of him wanted to throw it back at her feet. It wouldn’t hurt her, only frighten the kit, and maybe discourage her from throwing any more. “Cut it out!” he hissed instead. _

_ She stepped forwards, another rock in hand - stars, where was she finding the cursed things? - when he saw the stain.  _

_ “Wait, stop! You’re injured!” Alex realized, panic swelling. His own death he could live with, metaphorically speaking, but this (mostly) innocent child? Not in a thousand years. _

_ She burst into tears and while she did throw the rock, it landed before it hit him, tumbling down the slope of debris and away from them both. “You hurt my Uncle Captain,” she said, the same hint of an accent but otherwise flawless Basic coming from her, just as before. The words confused him more than her choice of language.  _

_ “Your ‘Uncle Captain’?” Alex repeated, but noticed that despite the fact she had stopped throwing rocks at him, she still kept her distance. Alex didn’t blame her. _

_ The big bad scary man who’d likely traumatized her through this whole event? Alex would stay away, too. Kriff, he’d surely made a mess out of things this time. _

_ “I’m not going to hurt you, remember? I tried to save your Uncle Captain from the explosion, so you wouldn’t be hurt.” Alex said as gently as he could muster. It didn’t go over well. Alex frowned, and struggled to push himself up. _

_ She started sobbing, and crumpled to the ground. Her dress was torn and frayed, but she didn’t look as bad off as the mangled clothing aside from a few cuts here and there. “I wanna go home!” she whimpered. _

_ Freezing, Alex’s face softened. “Me, too, little one,” He said. “I promise I don’t want to hurt you. You need help. Some of those cuts look nasty.” It was true. Despite the fact that she was awake and walking around, (throwing, too, Alex’s jaw reminded him) the small Lasat was still hurt, still a bleeding child. _

_ She hesitated; clearly she could see Alex wasn’t in any real condition to reach where she was sitting, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still be dangerous. Alex wondered how ingrained the military training of Lasan was in the minds of even its youngest inhabitants, and the thought alone made his heart sink.  _

_ Knowing he couldn’t force her to trust him, nor should he, Alex waited patiently.  _

_ Finally, she dared to speak up again. “Will you help my Uncle Captain, too?” she asked. _

_ Alex nodded. “I’m going to help both of you. We have to help each other to get home, okay?” _

_ “Okay,”  _

_ “Now, we need to clean out those cuts.” He pointed just behind her. “Do you see the fountain of water coming out from that pipe over there?” She sniffled, but nodded, looking between him and the water curiously. “Can you try your best to wash the cuts you have? After that, we can see if wrapping them up will help.” _

_ The Lasat stumbled over to the small water source and hesitated at first, her little face scrunching up in discomfort at the cold water on her skin. Alex took the opportunity to look at the adult Lasat, his companion’s Uncle Captain.  _

_ General Orrelios, his brain supplied, because obviously, Alex thought sarcastically, he would need to be reminded of the name of the Lasat in command of Lasan’s High Honor Guard.  _

_ Orrelios’s chest rose and fell steadily, but he hadn’t stirred; he was definitely still unconscious. The general had been injured before the building had been blown up. There was no telling what state he’d be in after surviving the same thing as Alex and their mutual acquaintance. Still, as grateful as Alex was Orrelios had not woken, he was perhaps strangely more relieved General Orrelios was alive. _

_ “I’m done!” she announced, and came back over to Alex to show him. Without the blood in her fur, she looked much better, it seemed the bleeding wasn’t too bad, but the sides of her dress were stained nonetheless. “Are you going to wrap up my arms?” _

_ He nodded. “Yes, I am. We’re going to try and use this-” he ripped off a good chunk of his loose pants at the ends and grimaced at the not too careful jostling of his leg “-To wrap those cuts up nice and comfy, okay?” _

_ Although she did approach him, her eyes still carried a great deal of fear. He could see it; she didn’t trust him, and that was going to continue to be a prominent barrier between the two of them unless he was a miracle worker, which he was not. “After this,” he explained, “I’m going to need your help to check on your Uncle Captain, and make sure he’s okay, too.” _

_ It seemed the little Lasat knew her options were limited, because she came close enough for him to wrap those makeshift bandages around her larger cuts. The cloth was tight, and well-arranged, but imperfect, the fraying ends of the fabric looking like discolored fur. “How are we going to help my Uncle Captain?” sheasked, turning her head to look at where the Honor Guard’s general lay.  _

_ Alex focused on the final knot of the last cloth on her arm. “We have to be able to get over to him, first. I’m having trouble walking, I’m going to need your help to check on him, okay?” _

_ She nodded slowly. “How?” _

_ “If you can help me stand, I’ll just need to hold your hand to get as close as we can so you and I can find out the best way to get to him.” He knew his plan was shaky at best, and turned to see if there was anything to help him move. There was nothing in the direction of the two Lasats, but he turned his head to look the other direction, and was startled. The bo-rifle, he realized, and reached over to pull the weapon from the rubble.  _

* * *

Alex jerked back from where he was standing as if he’d been burned. He stumbled backwards out of his room, and fled the Ghost without his weapon and into the grasses. All he could think about were the trusting eyes of that little Lasat, so big and full of hope- hope that they would survive and escape together. 

He couldn’t help it, he stumbled again, and fell face-first in the dirt, crying out partially in surprise, but more in pain when the hardened soil stole his breath along with his dignity.

* * *

_ The guardsman’s bo-rifle was scratched, and while not quite  _ his  _ bo-rifle, it was a sturdy reliable weapon. The staff would help him stand. With some serious effort, and a nervous little Lasat by his side, Alex was on his feet. He staggered forwards, the motion uncomfortable and unfamiliar. It was like being a child who had yet to take their first real steps.  _

_ The little Lasat started to make her way across the room, walking alongside the edge of the pool of water with him uneasily limping on her other side. The odd pair struggled on the uneven terrain, but they were close enough it wasn’t too much of a trek for them. When a couple rocks from underneath her feet shifted and began to slip away with her along for the ride, Alex shouted, and lunged for her hand, which somehow he caught.  _

_ She shrieked at him, but he ignored it and pulled her away from the pool of water just as the chunks of stone hit the water and the wires spewed another cluster of sparks. The water, hissed and bubbled, and he could’ve sworn that the color changed before his eyes, but the bright light faded, leaving him and a terrified child to stare at one another where they had fallen away from the pool. _

_ Tears welled in her eyes, and his guilt multiplied more somehow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he winced, letting go and putting up his hands. “I didn’t want you to fall in, it isn’t safe.” A poor excuse, he knew, but it wasn’t like he had much else to go with besides the truth. “You know about how water and electricity don't mix, right?” _

_ She shook her head.  _

_ “Well, you saw what happened when those wires started acting up, right?” He pointed over to where said wires sparked as they hung above the pool of water.  _

_ The Lasat nodded. “Yes.” _

_ “If you fell in, you could have been badly hurt.” Alex said. It was an egregious oversimplification, but the only explanation he could muster for the time being. “You have to be careful, little one. It isn’t safe down here,” _

_ “Well, I was going to say the same thing,” the sneering General Orrelios said. Alex looked up in horror to see the Lasat standing not too far off, a murderous glare on his face reserved especially for the rebel laying on the ground. Basic streamed from his mouth, flawless and cold.  _

It matches his reputation,  _ Alex thought bitterly. _

* * *

He grunted with the effort of pushing himself off the ground enough to roll over and look upwards with a blank stare.  _ I wonder if you knew how things would go when you and I met under that rubble.  _ Alex sighed. He sincerely doubted either of them would have been able to anticipate what had happened, much less been prepared for it. 

He knew  _ he _ certainly hadn’t been.  _ Karabast, Orrelios, what did you do? What did  _ I _ do? _

Alex didn’t sleep for a few more hours, wrestling with himself as he laid under the night sky and wondered if he’d ever find forgiveness for what he had done under that rubble. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! The next chapter is sorta kinda ready, but full of action and I have a few sections I want to give some attention before I publish. :) Alex and General Orrelios have some stuff to sort out ;)


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